The Cerberus Files : Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces
by LogicalPremise
Summary: A collection of Cerberus documents providing insight into alien black operations forces and the dark acts of their governments, and of some criminal groups. Sort of my take on Renegade Reinterpretations, except more like 'bloodthirsty lunatic reinterpretations with an axe.' M for profanity, images and ideas.
1. Introduction

**The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: HELNET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS...CLEAR**

 **SYSFILL 393920-ADD-NINE:** _ **Cross check complete**_

 **DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO :: MINSTA-792**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE...ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: MINSTA**

Sir,

I would like to again protest the concept of putting Ms. Lawson in charge of the Revenant Project. While I understand she is a competent organizer and somewhat acquainted with biomedical systems, she is not, by nature, a researcher or a real doctor. And this Wilson cretin sounds like the sort of snake oil salesman you get spam email from your TTL at three in the morning offering penile enhancement.

However, since you seem to be firmly set on this course, I can only caution you to expect setbacks. Ms. Lawson can be petulant at times.

I have received your most recent orders, and my preliminary thoughts are enclosed.

Dr. Galen Minsta

 **Cerberus Thought of the Day:** Opportunity is both a weapon and a vulnerability.

* * *

I am ... ambivalent about the task you've given me, and I am uncertain that I'm the most qualified to take it on. A better understanding of alien cultures and histories, biology and military status – I can see how my expertise would be of credit and use there.

I am not so sure how well my abilities will translate into an overview – or examination – of the various groups that act as alien analogues to our own group. Nor am I sure that such groups _can_ or _should_ be compared to Cerberus.

I will begin with an overview of what I know to explain my difficulty with the notion.

When I speak of 'black operations groups' , a certain level of human connotation comes to mind. Humanity has had spies, assassins and saboteurs for centuries, in every known culture and nation-state throughout history. But the concept of black operations – deniable actions taken by a government's special forces, sometimes compartmentalized to protect from diplomatic blowback when such tasks were discovered or breached – is a far more recent phenomena in human culture.

Yet we must never forget the alien is just that – alien. Take the asari Nightwind, for example. With the ascendancy of the Thirty over asari city-states, no larger national grouping ever arose. With the dominance of linking and joining making the very concept of privacy a joke, and without any form of war once the Age of Queens had passed, there was never a need for such black operations forces.

Prior to the discovery of alien life, I very strongly doubt the asari had any such heritage of such acts at all. We are all very impressed with asari commandos, and they would seem a natural fit for such work, but the very word 'commando' is indeed a best-fit. The most appropriate translation is awkward, 'hunter-of-enemies-and-weakness', but gets across the concept. Asari warfare was never widespread and their entire military doctrine is about specifically applied pressure, surgical strikes, and the heavy use of indirect action.

Psychologically, asari would hate the very idea of a 'sacrificial' unit that embodies the very concept of black operations. It is no surprise they choose to use ardat-yakshi in that role, as in their eyes these females should be dead anyway.

My point is that alien views of black operations forces strongly differ from our own. Their frameworks for success, failure, and even operational standards vary. The Deathwatch of the Turians is not even remotely a secret thing – their chilling brutality, casual disregard for life or collateral damage, and amoral stance are blatantly, widely advertised, since the turian concept of black ops abandoned honor for fear, restraint for terror, and seeks to actually embrace blowback and controversy as a method of showing the turians will not be pushed further when the Deathwatch goes to war.

Likewise, the Remembrance Dancer assassins of the drell aren't even soldiers. Killers, yes, but they are also priests and artists and above all else – mercenaries. Aside from refusing to take jobs against the Hanar Ascendency they have no operational standards and more than once have ended up on the opposite sides of a fight and actually killed one another!

While understanding these forces – and what lead to their creation – may be useful, and even valuable in terms of operational preparedness, we cannot expect them to conform to the methods and limitations of Cerberus.

Specifically, Cerberus was originally founded to prevent hostile actors from deranging our culture, government, finances and lifestyle. It was designed to safeguard against the triple threat of salarian intelligence gathering and sabotage, asari economic and cultural sabotage, and turian military and paramilitary assault. While we have moved far off that model until recently, the framework we operated under when this project was a part of OPB still remains in effect.

No formal connection between Cerberus and the Alliance could be allowed because it would let aliens assail our government with charges based on our acts, which were driven by necessity and pragmatism. The same is not true in all ways of other races.

The League of Zero and the Nightwind are both comprised of beings that are illegal under Citadel Law and criminals in their own cultures. There is no possible way, no matter what evidence is gathered, to link either group to the ruling powers in question, since from what I can gather neither one actually answers to the government.

On the other hand, the atrocities of the Volus Defense Force are actually seen as a _positive thing_ by the turians as they indicate a willingness to take up arms and actually do more than just economic support. Humanity would have been embargoed to hell and back if we did half of the genemod work the volus have, not mentioning their most recent stunt with the vorcha. And yet the ugly truth – that the volus are the lynchpin of the economy in terms of investment, tradeships, and banking – means they get a pass where other races would not.

I am unsure of what exactly you would want out of such a report, Mr. Harper, to be perfectly frank. And we now have much more limited methods of intelligence gathering in some arenas. Your missive mentioned Mr. Pellham and Mr. Leng would be assisting me as they recovered from their respective cybersurgical augmentations to fix the injuries from Omega.

They may have some more detailed ideas of how to address some of the shortcomings in my report. I will defer to them (where possible, and assuming Pel does not act like a moron).

* * *

 **Author's Note:** _My main fic story, Of Sheep and Battle Chicken (OsaBC) is set in an alternative universe to the 'canon' Mass Effect. My initial intent with the story was to do a 'show, not tell' reinterpretation, similar to but with a different focus than_ Renegade Reinterpretations. _It wasn't intended to be a complete rewrite at the beginning, and it has grown faster and more AU than I originally intended._

 _The purpose of this document is to outline the AU world I work in. It is a more renegade place, if that word has any meaning at all, which I doubt. The difference between Paragon and Renegade is that Paragons do things the right way, and Renegades do things any way that achieves what they want. Not all good is nice, and not all bad is evil. But at the end of the day, both Paragons and Renegades end up doing the right thing._

 _Part of this more renegade verse requires a better understanding of why it is that way, and the actors involved. That is the ultimate purpose of this document._

 _Each of the 'major players' in the Shadow War will be covered: the asari Nightwind, turian Blackwatch, salarian League of Zero, Drell Rememberance Dancers, and the Volus Defense Force. Minor players like P's Circus and bits of the networks of Aria and the Shifter will also be covered._

 _The second half of this document will attempt to convey exactly what the alien governments are up to. Until this point, much of the Premiseverse has highlighted that the Systems Alliance is to be seen in a less than salubrious light. That is, they are monsters that make canon Cerberus look like Conrad Verner._

 _That being said, the SA is not even close to the worst actors in the galactic arena. That is what this document will highlight._

 _I usually do not put a warning on my works. Some of them can be slightly disturbing in areas, but nothing too bad. **This work will cover events, concepts and images that may be highly offensive, extremely graphic, and involving concepts that are absolutely not for anyone not an adult.** I'm not joking around, people - when I said I'd make 40k look like My Little Pony I was already thinking of this part of the Cerberus Files._


	2. Asari Nightwind

**The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: HELNET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS...CLEAR**

 **SYSFILL 393920-ADD-NINE:** _ **Cross check complete**_

 **DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO :: MINSTA-792**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE...ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: MINSTA**

I once foolishly thought writing about batarian psychology would be the most revolting thing I had to undertake. Oh, how wrong I was, Mr. Harper.

Reviewing the modus operandi of the Nightwind is enough to make even hardened operators like Mr. Leng recoil in affronted disgust. The group's formation and sponsors remain shadowy, but there can be no doubt the Thirty are their ultimate masters. The question of who they are most often employed against has been answered in a way I find horrific.

Bluntly put, Cerberus was created to protect humanity from alien assault. The Nightwind was created to ensure the asari would never be free of the Thirty and to encourage trends that lead to better control of the clanless by the Thirty.

Given what ardat-yakshi do to their victims, and the fact that this has been occurring since not too long after the meeting of asari and salarian, the Nightwind has killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of asari, crippled and tortured millions more, and their impact on the greater galactic society – or their use as assassins, as we found out when they killed Dr. Uraj – is a literal afterthought.

 **Cerberus Thought of the Day:** Reward is often a good yardstick by which to measure risk. The inverse is not true.

* * *

 **FORMATION OF THE NIGHTMARE**

The history of the group known as the Nightwind is shrouded in legends and myths. Given that it happened not long after the birth of Christ, this is hardly surprising.

By the time of the discovery of the Citadel, the number of ardat-yakshi had risen sharply. With the conflicts between the Thirty having become more contests of economy, technology had isolated some of the genetic factors that lead to the creation of these mutants.

Bluntly put, any asari/asari joining that resulted in offspring had a base percentage chance of producing what was eventually called A/Y Susceptible Carriers. The chances were roughly 8% for clanless, 2% for the Clans, and 1% for Lesser Houses and the Thirty. Detailed genotyping revealed that 'lower classes' had minor garbage mutations in the DNA that resulted in malformed nervous connection sites, resulting in a curious grounding effect that was harmless unless induced in another being – such as during joining.

A/Y Susceptible Carriers were not Ardat-Yakshi – but if two of them mated, the offspring had a 20% chance at being such. With populations in the mid billions, the number of ardat-yakshi during this period was thus terrifyingly high.

Strict mating laws and structures were introduced to counteract this, but a Justicar monument stelae erected outside of Armali indicated that as late as 150 CY, sixty-five Justicars died fighting over six hundred Ardat-Yakshi in pitched battle in the hinterlands of that city-state.

The discovery of salarians and, later on, quarians, resulted in a new paradigm – mating with aliens not only prevented any further ardat-yakshi births, but the child of an A/Y Susceptible Carrier and an alien was not, herself, an A/Y Susceptible carrier. While it took hundreds of years to get to the point where it was the norm rather than outlandish to take alien mates to have children, the result reduced AY expression rates to almost nothing.

In the interim, however, the Thirty came to the conclusion that without active efforts the number of ardat-yakshi would be unmanageable. Thus, several powerful Matriarchs undertook a series of hotly debated acts in CY 310, taking custody of almost six hundred ardat-yakshi currently in the hands of the Justicars.

These asari were brutally modified, with primitive cyberware (a salarian invention) and sickening mental conditioning and torture. Records indicate dozens were literally electrocuted to death over the course of days as asari scientists attempted to find voltages that would allow expression of their powers while allowing remote shut off of their biotics.

Various biological weapons were also tested, resulting in several 'terminator strains' of a virulent hemorrhagic fever that was activated by protein bonds only found in active ardat-yakshi. Nineteen of these infections were unleashed across the span of sixty years, killing thousands of ardat yakshi – and an estimated two hundred million totally innocent asari.

Humanity, of course, has committed sickening acts. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Bhroni, and Ardiente were all disgusting monsters. But these men were also insane. They acted with the cooperation of a subset of their populations and were treated as the monsters they were after their well deserved deaths.

The six matriarchs that came up with the 'solution' to the Ardat-Yakshi are even today hailed as 'heroes' and 'visionaries'.

The Nightwind, it seems, was a tail-spin off of this plan, taking survivors who made it through the various experiments and mental torture into a program to seduce and kill off those asari citizens, especially discontented clanless, that challenged the Thirty. This program was so successful the Thirty kept using it even after their disease (and the endless butchery of the Justicars) had reduced AY numbers to less than 1% of their former levels.

By CY 1110, the Nightwind's official status was 'purged', and the only remaining records would be stored securely in the Temple of Athame. We only know of this because of Trellani's knowledge of such, as it was one of the many things that soured her on the Temple. With most clanless and clan asari now taking alien mates, most AY's came from the ranks of the Thirty themselves.

These unfortunates were taken at birth and submitted through a full century of abuse mixed with conditioning. Beaten and physically abused, with torturous levels of pulse suppression forced into their living quarters and constantly threatened with death by explosive collar every day, they were trained by fallen commandos and seductive experts.

Rewarded by being given clanless asari to literally rape to death, the Nightwind were given no limits in their powers to fulfill their goals. By CY 1940, the Nightwind had expanded to over two thousand such unfortunates, and new members were trained in large groups of sixty at a time – and then turned against one another in disgusting 'playoffs' to see which of two ardat-yakshi would survive when forced to meld to one another.

The average asari – indeed, I would say 95% of the Thirty – knew nothing of this, and even I, who hold no love of asari, doubt very strongly any of them would agree to it. It was continually sponsored by the same few Houses that kicked the whole thing off. Unfortunately, we are not in possession of exactly which of the Thirty is behind the Nightwind.

* * *

 **THE GOAL OF THE NIGHTWIND**

The Nightwind has four goals.

The first is to penetrate and seduce asari separatists and any asari agitating for greater control by clanless, anyone opposed to the Clans, or anyone opposed to the Thirty. They seek these people out, offer to help them with their goals, identify as many as possible, and then destroy them – usually by mind-raping the leadership to death, then utilizing more conventional methods to kill any followers or acolytes. This also, disgustingly, includes the order to randomly strike at the clanless, to kill off strong leaders (even if said leaders fully follow the will of the Thirty) and to destabilize anything the Thirty point them at, with the ultimate stated purpose of making the clanless look to the Thirty or at least the Clans for every form of political leadership.

The second goal is to police the Thirty themselves, to ensure none of them are acting to attempt to dominate the rest. This, in my mind, means the most likely candidates for who is behind the Nightwind to be one of the Houses of Storm.

The third goal is to counter penetration of the Thirty (emphasis on the Thirty – NOT the Republic, not asari in general, not asari business interests – just the Thirty) by enemy infiltrators, and when possible, to seduce and drain the knowledge from such infiltrators to be put to good use by the Thirty. This is, sadly, how they managed to locate our facilities and kill Dr. Uraj.

Their final goal is to kill off ardat-yakshi not of the Thirty, or at the very least, to capture them for further study and experimentation.

You will note that most of these goals have nothing to do with protecting asari society as a whole. The only defensive aspect is protecting the Thirty from infiltration, and in practice, this boils down more towards "prevent anyone from breaking the security of the Thirty". This is not a black ops group so much as a nightmare collective of tortured, near-insane monsters, so altered by cybernetics, mind-control drugs, mental conditioning and coercive psychology that they cannot be called in control of their actions in any way, shape or form.

I strongly suspect the current asari view of ardat-yakshi is solely actually due to the actions of these vile witches. The SA has recently identified two ardat-yakshi that immigrated to the SA. One of them is on biotic suppressive drugs by choice and was discovered only after three years, and had killed no one. The other one found out when she hit puberty and was going to kill herself before the Commissariat stopped her. While I have no doubt that some AYs' are probably heartless thrill-killers, I cannot help but wonder how much of that is propaganda.

* * *

 **OPERATIONAL CONTROL**

Operations of the Nightwind are rather disorganized. The Nightwind is broken into large cell structures called Oceans. An Ocean has as many as five hundred operatives. Each Ocean has four Seas with fifty members each and a reserve Basin with the rest.

A Sea is assigned a particular task and is expected to keep at it until the task is completed or all members are destroyed. Suicidal attacks and situations where the operative is not expected to survive make up well over half of all missions.

Each operative is controlled by cortex bombs, remote-access biotic shunts, internal reservoirs of anti-biotic drugs and an equal amount of high-concentration poison, and usually a trailing Nightwind operative as oversight. All Justicars have command-word killswitch phrases for Nightwind members.

Nightwind members are given extremely sadistic and vicious mental conditioning and what we would call Pavlovian reward schemes. These result in the operatives being completely vicious, sex obsessed, and often highly murderous and violent. Some of them are even chipped, using the nervestim technology put on the market by the quarians, to gain sexual pleasure by killing or maiming. Post-hypnotic commands and command words are also used to drive them to psychotic rages.

I will never forget the horror of the Nightwind attack that killed Dr. Uraj, the insane, contorted expression and banshee like wails of the fell figures in black. Even when heavily wounded or missing limbs they would scream out in anger and continue to try to strike at anything they could, or blow themselves up in a frantic attempt to kill.

Nightwind 'leadership', such as it is, does not pick the missions they go on; these are assigned by a go-between known as the Assessor. The Assessor is herself an ardat-yakshi, one with implanted cortex bombs, and is the clear cut-out between the Thirty and the Nightwind. It is highly likely that if the Nightwind were exposed they would be 'outed' as some kind of 'ardat-yakshi terrorist network' – there is no direct connection at any level between the Thirty and the Assessor, but according to Trellani one exists.

Midnight's Kiss, whom I mentioned in my write up on the asari, was the previous Assessor.

* * *

 **NIGHTWIND MEMBERSHIP**

Almost all of the ardat-yakshi in the Nightwind are from the Lesser Houses or Guardian Houses of the Thirty. A handful are from the High Houses.

Members are taken just after birth when genetic testing identifies them as having the A/Y gene pair. They are trained (or tortured) until roughly ninety to one hundred fifteen years of age, before being ritualistically 'rewarded' by allowing them to meld and kill a number of clanless asari (I suspect slave markets in the Traverse known to sell asari slaves are used for this purpose).

This is not only a 'reward' for completing their training, but helps to boost their biotic strength. Members who do well are rewarded with such disgusting gifts quite often.

God alone knows how many asari have been fed to these women as payment for their vile acts.

* * *

 **NIGHTWIND COMBAT DOCTRINE**

Spare me.

Nightwind are screaming, shrieking lunatics, blown on red sand and with enough biotic power to splatter a Glorious batarian. Tactics are something they eschew. Forget any ideas of coolly trained asari commandos; these beasts rarely if ever use weapons aside from warp swords.

Then again, they hardly need to. The 'flash step' of an ardat yakshi is much faster than a normal asari's, bordering on a short range charge. They are fully capable of boosting their strength and speed to completely unnatural levels using biotics, and their barriers are strong enough to nearly completely ignore small arms fire unless taken for long periods of time.

They rarely bother with group tactics, each operative seeking her own target and proceeding to use as much force as possible in killing it.

When not blown into a combat rage, such as when seducing and stalking targets, they prefer to use an application of warp and pull to shove a warp-enhanced knife-hand strike into a vital organ for a quick, silent kill. That's assuming they don't meld with the target, which the very rare survivors have described like having your muscles replaced with lava and feeling every inch of your nervous system plucked out with tweezers.

Charming women.

* * *

 **NIGHTWIND EQUIPMENT**

There is apparently no uniform equipment loadout for Nightwind operatives. Most of the time, their only armaments are warp swords and their own biotics, although at times some have been reported using shotguns and other low-training requirement weapons.

Explosives, particularly grenades thrown with biotic powers, are also common.

Nightwind armor is reinforced ballistic cloth with form-fitting panels of high-impact ceramic, high combat boots, and an armored jacket. Most Nightwind operatives also don mirror-like face masks – these include an explosive to prevent facial identification. Nightwind operatives undergo surgical operations to remove fingerprints as well.

Most Nightwind have a suite of combat-related cybernetics installed, including a custom pump that distributes anti-regeneration drugs, combat pharmaceuticals, and endorphin boosters. Some have blueware replacements for their limbs; others have eye replacements for enhanced targeting purposes.

Nightwind operatives in seduction situations are heavily trained in 'living from the sea', obtaining weapons and equipment onsite or through other means. And of course, given that each one is a master biotic, they really have all the power they need at the tip of their fingers at any given moment.

* * *

 **NIGHTWIND TACTICS**

When I speak of 'tactics' I mean in terms of how they deploy and in what situations.

Most operations are either low-scale missions with one primary and one backup, or large scale ops with a full group of ten or more working together. Small scale ops have the tendency to be longer term, and can last months at a time, with a focus on keeping the agents calm and capable of gathering information and identifying targets.

Larger scale ops, on the other hand, are rapidly put together, with slapdash planning and a large element of improvisation involved. While this means they can run into unexpected snags, it also means each and every operative can be doing something different, making devising precise counter-strategies difficult.

* * *

 **NIGHTWIND OPERATIONS**

There are five primary types of Nightwind activity:

ACQUISITION is the Nightwind attempting to infiltrate native asari groups opposed to the plans of the Thirty, particularly groups agitating for open borders with the Alliance or resistance to breeding controls. The operative will infiltrate the group, identify the leader or key members, and attempt to enter a relationship or bonding situation with one of them.

If the situation looks like it is merely one asari speaking her mind, then the operative will meld with (and kill) the target. If, on the other hand, a group has formed, or a matriarch is leading them, the operative will call for a strike, and between six and twenty additional Nightwind will kill everyone involved. This may be played up as either 'ardat-yakshi terrorist act' or sometimes disguised by arson, electrical failures, etc.

ISOLATION is the Nightwind monitoring and acting on dissent members of the Thirty, those acting in a method to contravene the will of the Council of Matriarchs or (in rare cases) embrace viewpoints contrary to the wishes of the Matriarchy. Nightwind members will usually act in a very subtle fashion in this regard: some of them are actually cosmetically modified to resemble non Ardat-Yakshi spies who are sent in to meld or link with the target and gain their trust, and then go in themselves for the lethal meld that kills the target. These missions are almost always covered up and kept very quiet and in almost all cases the one that performs the mission, if at all possible, is killed – they don't want any of the Nightwind to get a taste for consuming members of the Thirty.

INTERSECTION is a generic name for missions they run against other agencies penetrating the security of the Thirty, and these are almost always suicide missions designed to wreak as much havoc and terror as possible. The goal, of course, is not only to disrupt the infiltration and alert the Thirty to what is happening, but to cripple the infiltrating groups' capabilities and absorb useful tactical or intelligence data.

DECLINATION missions are run when dangerous clanless ardat-yakshi are identified, with a goal of isolating them and killing them, and then using that ardat-yakshi's existence to cover other Nightwind atrocities. Many (perhaps almost all) of the 'terrorist acts' supposedly committed by ardat-yakshi are actually cover acts by the Nightwind.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, after all – asari deceit has always revolted me due to the pervasive nature of it.

ABSOLUTION missions are usually single-target suicide missions, run on a variety of targets, mostly to sow terror and confusion among the clanless. They are related in that fashion to some DECLINATION missions, but are truly purposed to set up the Republic Army or Justicars to 'heroically' show up to save the clanless from the 'evil ardat-yakshi terrorist' and cover them with glory. The sheer, vile cold-blooded nature of this kind of deception only drives home how sickening the use of the Nightwind has become.

* * *

 **FINAL THOUGHTS**

The Nightwind are, with no exceptions, completely revolting on every possible level – operational, moral, legal, psychological, and behavioral. To be honest, given the elegance, unity-seeking nature and general passivity of the asari, when I began gathering this information and speaking with Trellani about the Nightwind, I was utterly astonished that the asari would indulge in such things.

I now strongly suspect that the 'gentle' asari is little more than a myth, or to be more precise, only applies to the clanless. The ruthlessness and sheer unconcern for life and tragedy the Nightwind's very creation, much less their employment, has caused is the sort of thing a hardened sociopath would embrace, but not those who claim all is one.

The Thirty clearly only hold their views towards other members of the Thirty – they see their own people as cattle or sheep, and outsiders as little more than parasites or prey. The creation of a group like the Nightwind speaks volumes to the mindset of the Thirty and their eventual goals.

The more I learn about the blue witches, the more I hate them. The fact that the Thirty used the Nightwind on ardat-yakshi seeking to join the Alliance was horrifying enough when I first learned it, but now it takes on a new and entirely more sinister taste.

I understand, reviewing what information I have gathered, why you felt it so important to incorporate the asari of Watson into the paradigm shift we wish to encourage in humanity. And I have more … empathy and approval … for Trellani's wish to eradicate the Thirty utterly. At first I wrote such off as merely the product of a damaged mind drowning in grief.

I do not say that to dismiss her loss – only that I felt the Thirty were distasteful, oversexed whores planning to reduce humans to slavery. I had no idea at the time they were anywhere near this … sick.

That being said, I wish to reiterate something.

The 'clanless' ardat-yakshi are **not** the core problem. I fully believe these asari are of course, dangerous – anyone who can kill through such acts and gets addicted to doing so is a natural born serial killer if they CHOOSE to do so. But it is clear the Thirty are encouraging the Nightwind to engage in depravity to drum up fears against the other ardat-yakshi, and the only reason the Thirty have to do so is to both ensure they are never challenged by the clanless and to ensure only they have access to such potent biotics.

The Age of Queens was defined by those not of the Thirty defining the course of asari development. What would the asari have been like if the Thirty and the Queens had destroyed each other utterly in that war, instead of the Thirty triumphing? I cannot help but think even the vilest stories and legends of the Silent Queen do not match the sheer horror of the Nightwind.


	3. Asari Justicar Order

**The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: HELNET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS...CLEAR**

 **SYSFILL 393920-ADD-NINE:** **Cross check complete**

 **DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO :: MINSTA-792**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE...ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: MINSTA**

The Justicar Order is often considered a policing group – perhaps a more literally minded and inflexible version of our own Commissariat.

I don't know why in God's name I was ever fool enough to think the asari would not pervert and corrupt everything they touched, nor what I could have possibly been drinking when I assumed the Justicars could not be 'in' on the darkness in asari society.

My first clue was Trellani's assertion – which I validated independently – that Justicars had command-word kill phrases to use on the Nightwind. This immediately struck me as improbable, given the Justicar views on both ardat-yakshi and justice.

The Code of the Justicars, however, is not all about justice after all. It is about obedience, order, and control. As I said in the opening report, our concept of 'black ops' is a human one, and alien races uphold a very different view of such things.

I cannot compare the Justicars to the Nightwind – The Justicars are intolerant and amoral but hardly depraved. But I include them here for two reasons. First, they fit the definition of the term in the asari sense of the word – they are yet another control upon the clanless.

Second, perhaps more importantly, they are the ones tasked with cleaning of the evidence of the Nightwind, and in many cases handling alien intelligence assets. While they are not proactive in terms of acting on other races, the disconnect between their actions – which are supposedly independent – and truth of their actual orders from the Thirty is most definitely in the theme of deniable ops.

 **Cerberus Thought of the Day:** Justice is a word used by those who have no need of expediency.

* * *

 **FORMATION OF THE JUSTICAR ORDER**

As I mentioned in my write-up on the asari as a whole, the origins of the Justicar Order are not that far back in time by asari terms, although ancient in human ones. In the chaos after the War of Queens, the ardat-yakshi were still highly problematic. In addition, a combination of rapid population growth due to increasing technological prowess, urbanization and the collapse of the Athamist religion lead to wide amounts of (even by asari standard) moral deviance, violence and crime.

The various city states had long established groups of empowered clan members called Archons to deal with crime, backed by city state police forces. But rings of asari criminals and packs of ardat-yakshi were far beyond their ability to deal with. More than once Royal Paladins were required to quell such disruptions, which the Thirty worried would place them in an adversarial light to the clanless.

As a result, the Thirty created a new group – a so-called holy order of paladins, devoted to the aspect of Athame as Balancer of Justice. Dubbed the Justicar Order, they were a fully supra-national force, bound to no city state, and beholden by grim oaths of sublimation to the elimination of violent crime, mental rape, and the ardat-yakshi.

For almost three hundred years, these Justicars acted as the sword of the Thirty, increasingly becoming politicized in their actions, almost turning into a secret police force. This in turn started some level of resentment, not only among the clanless but inside Clan Hearthwatch, who had normally held all police duties. The conflict between the early Justicars and the asari they policed grew violent at times, and ultimately began to result in a backlash against their authority.

This was not assisted by the fact that there was, at the time, no uniform code of justice. Justicars enforced 'law' as they saw fit – and often times committed grievous overreach in solving problems.

Ultimately, the tide of crime dimmed, while the ardat-yakshi problem only grew in scope. Combined with the backlash against their authority, the Justicars felt – with good reason – some changes had to be undertaken, and formality introduced to the law-keeping process.

The founder of the Justicars, Matriarch Venna, wrote the Code of the Justicars in a poetic group of over five thousand sutras. Each sutra contained a rationale for 'justice', and a set of acts to be carried out. The purpose of these sutras was to provide firm guidance to the Justicars, who all too often had to decide between the justice they saw as fitting and the demands of the Thirty.

Some four hundred years after their founding, Venna decreed the Justicars would not swear obedience to the Thirty after one of their number was discovered mind-raping several clanless. The outrage of the clanless was palpable, even as House Vabo claimed they were not required to submit.

It was Matriarch Chen'a T'Armal who famously released the Justicars from their vows to the Thirty, replacing such with a so-called 'Zeroth Vow of Sublimation' to Athame herself. A Justicar who swears to such obliterates her own existence. She is legally dead in all aspects of asari culture, unable to own land, property beyond weapons and armor, or to participate in any form or aspect of daily life. Justicars cannot have mates or children, and are sworn to uphold every aspect of the Code.

To enforce this, as part of the process of becoming a Justicar, each one is put through a ritualized meld that is, in my view, repeated mental rape and torture, burning the code into the asari's very spirit until even thinking about acting outside of its tenets is impossible. Justicars are famed for their inflexibility, but to be fair, even that is too kind. They are not capable of operating beyond the code or of setting aside any part of it except in very exacting, tightly defined situations of limited duration.

After the Justicar Reformation, the Thirty were deprived of a potent weapon for control, and were themselves now at least peripherally vulnerable to the justice of the Code – on paper. In practice, in return for T'Armal's 'freeing' of the Justicars, the senior Justicar leaders were given some aspect of highly controlled information from the Temple of Athame.

Trellani remains tight-lipped about what the hell shook her faith so badly, but has hinted some of it is known by the Order. Whatever it was, Matriarch Venna killed herself after discovery, but not before she altered a specific sutra of the Code.

Sutra five thousand and six reads as follows:

'For justice is a word, a concept of hope, decency, and order, a template applied to an imperfect, flawed body. Justice is a comforting lie, one we must make a truth wherever possible. And yet there will be times where justice requires injustice to reach. Where vile acts must be taken to reach noble goals. It is not the Justicar's place to guide, only to judge. Not ours to determine, only to enforce. When that time is come, it is not our will or our voice calling for the blade to fall, merely our hand.'

'The Thirty bear a burden we cannot share, nor should we wish to do so. Preserving them from corruption remains our mandate. Yet there is that we cannot allow to fall from the shadow of the temple, lest all be swept away. Let no sutra countermand this – when the words are spoken by the Thirty as a group, when they say an act is needed for the good of all, justice must take a second position to survival.'

This sutra, on its face, merely sounds like level-headed pragmatic caveat making. Its application is tied to a highly secretive order, one given to senior Justicars. Namely, that threats to the leadership of the asari by the Thirty would lead to upheaval, civil war, and mass death of the asari people.

This … secret mandate means that while individual members of the Thirty can be brought to justice by the Order, the Thirty as a group are NOT bound by such. If the Thirty act in unison, they can command the Justicar Order to do just about anything.

To the best of our ability to interpret events, the Thirty rarely, if ever, use this power. Minor changes in interpretations of the Code over the years have become far more hard line in many ways, and some of this appears to be due to the influence of the Thirty, but only four such 'orders' from the Thirty as a group have been handed down to the Justicars – that we KNOW of. Trellani hinted at others.

Unfortunately, said orders are utterly horrific.

* * *

 **THE GOAL OF THE JUSTICAR ORDER  
**

The higher public goal of the Justicar Order is the maintenance of morality, good order, justice and peace among the asari people (and to a lesser degree, anyone living within asari space). Their second goal is the obliteration or imprisonment of all ardat-yakshi.

The Code itself has not changed, but due to much of it being interpreted differently than it was written, it has increasingly become less about pure justice and far more about adherence to societal norms now badly antiquated. Some of the strain of asari society is due to the fact that such things are so heavily enforced – and that the Thirty, may they burn in a hell comprised of dioxygen difloride for all eternity, have twisted many of said sutras to their own purposes.

One rather unpleasant result of this is that, despite words of the sutras speaking of making punishment fit the crime, almost every result of a Justicar acting involves execution. Asari culture assumes that if a Justicar kills an asari, the asari was guilty – so blase is this assumption that even asari police officers cannot stop a Justicar from executing targets even if said target is already under arrest. They can request the Justicar hold off from such action for twenty four hours and that's it.

As bad as that is, the Four Orders from the Thirty are much darker.

The First Order is that the Justicars are to execute certain 'malcontents' when identified by the Thirty acting in concert. Almost all of these targets have, thus far, been political leaders of the clanless who were a bit too successful in thwarting the wishes of the Thirty. The sickening part about this is not the brutality – it is hardly much worse than the Commissariat – but that the Justicars have a tendency to assume anyone involved with the figure is equally guilty. Thousands of asari have been put to the sword as a result of this – some of them not even fully grown. The sutra speaking of a mother's taint passing to the child is tied into this order quite heavily.

This has ensured that most asari desiring societal change either flee the Republics entirely or hold their tongues carefully.

The Second Order is that attempts to violate the sanctity of the Temple of Athame are a threat to the asari race as a whole and must be responded to violently. It includes a clear authorization by the Thirty for the Justicars to literally undertake any means to accomplish this act – up to an including violation of the Citadel Accords on Warfare and Republic law. That means, in theory, if a Justicar felt the only way to preserve the secrets of the Temple was to, say, orbitally bombard a garden world, or use a bioweapon, or detonate a fucking eezo bomb inside the Citadel, they would do without hesitation. There isn't even any check on what a Justicar can get up to in such situations, which strikes me as nearly criminally negligent.

The Third Order is the most troubling to me, and is in a way an extension of the Second Order. It basically states that a Justicar is incapable of breaking the law when acting on behalf of the Thirty. Any action undertaken by the Justicars to enforce the needs of the Thirty is acceptable, and any methods are justified. It is under the aegis of the Third Order that Justicars such as Justicar Sevane, who tends to torture her victims prior to execution, or Justicar Aeliasi, who was only found out as an ardat-yakshi after two hundred years as a Justicar, are able to operate. Not only does the Justicar order never investigate its own, even suggesting a Justicar is acting in an unjust manner is a crime.

The Fourth Order, of course, is why I chose to include the Order in this document. It states, quite bluntly, that alien beings are not asari and cannot have any protections under the Code. Justicars cannot execute them out of hand outside of asari space – but within it, they are afforded no protections from the law.

The Fourth Order, in practice, is an open declaration of intent from the Thirty. If they identify a suspected spy cell or infiltrator, they have merely but to gesture, and the Justicars will act. Asari society will believe the Justicar would have acted only on the best of intentions, and diplomatic protests will fall on the insincere apologies of the Thirty.

I am not sure if the Justicars have any further orders, but it is very likely at least one such order exists, specifically one dealing with the Nightwind. Justicars are given a set of kill commands during training that will shut down any Nightwind, as Justicars are used to oversee and ensure the Nightwind comply with all requirements of their duties.

Given that the Nightwind die in heaps, and that many of them who are no longer convenient are setup in crimes to make the Justicar Order look good, I suspect most Justicars see them as disposable weapons rather than people.

* * *

 **JUSTICAR MEMBERSHIP  
**

All Justicars are, by ancient requirements, asari with long backgrounds of habitation on the seacoasts of Thessia. The vast majority of them are clanless, and most of them have no formal training when they decide to join.

On paper, any asari can apply to join the Order. Thousands do so. Even a few turians have joined. But being a member of the Order is NOT the same as being a Justicar. The Justicar Order acts in support of the Justicars, providing food, shelter, training, weapons, and ever other need the Justicars themselves cannot fulfill. But they have no powers in and of themselves.

Justicars are given over fifty years of dedicated training, including the ceremony to burn the Code into their very minds and techniques to increase biotic strength by dosing themselves with eezo laced water and other dangerous, cancer inducing exercises. Many Justicars die in training and more die from eezo poisoning after a few hundred years of this garbage, but it produces biotic warriors of unmatched skill. Several complex defensive and offensive biotic invocations are secrets of the Order, such as a method by which a Justicar can literally rip the bio-electrical current from a target, killing them instantly.

A handful of Justicars are from the Thirty. This is a rare event, and most of such who join are driven by a need for vengeance. It is especially noteworthy that while Justicars of the Thirty tend to follow the Code very closely, they are NOT subjected to having it burned into their very minds.

* * *

 **JUSTICAR COMBAT DOCTRINE  
**

Justicars do not follow typical police combat tactics, instead using a mix of intimidation, pressure tactics and high-energy mid to close range strikes. Justicars always work solo, and are very heavily cross-trained in everything from forensics and hacking to piloting and anatomy to be sure they have any needed skills.

Most Justicars will engage in combat at mid-range, utilizing biotics to cripple and injure their targets before immobilization (for interrogation) or closing with a powerful shotgun for field executions. They do not (typically) employ vehicles, battle-suits or anything of the sort.

When forced into direct combat, all Justicars are very well trained soldiers. Most are familiar with a wide range of weapons, multiple martial arts styles, and all forms of biotic CQB. Rarely, Justicars will employ mercenaries or contracted servants to assist in hunting down a target, but most prefer to act alone.

The sutras themselves are mostly quiet on how a Justicar should fight, but most will focus on biotics above conventional weapons. Many disdain subtle tactics and will go in openly, using the innate fear most asari have of their reputation and their biotic power to bull through opposition to the target.

* * *

 **JUSTICAR EQUIPMENT**

Justicars wear form-fitting kinetic isolation suits designed to boost the strength of their barriers. Such suits have the tendency to follow certain traditions : red in color, revealing in figure and lavishly decorated. The perceived sexualization of Justicars is actually more due to the need for minimal armor so the Justicar can use biotic enhancement invocations on their strength and speed levels.

The primary armament of a Justicar is a specially crafted shotgun created by the Clans, designed to burn through armor, cripple and incapacitate with pain, and short out shields. I described this terrifying weapon in my report on the asari, but recent technological developments have only made it more powerful.

Most Justicars will also use some other form of weapons – some like sniper rifles, others will use warp swords, still others will go in for drones, LMG's – there is no hard and fast doctrine for what a Justicar may bring to the fight.

* * *

 **JUSTICAR TACTICS**

Most Justicar operations are more tactical than strategic in formation – they are almost always reactionary in nature after all. Complicated infiltration, legal niceties and other such nuances are either left to normal police forces or in rare occasions C-SEC to clean up, while the Justicars are only concerned with killing their target.

That being said, Justicars are not blindly stupid. While they are almost always solo, they are not above calling for backup when they realize they face a threat they cannot subdue alone. Justicars have command authority over most Republic military forces and can even requisition space assets or Spectre assistance from asari Spectres.

The Justicar Order itself contains a small number of specialists who focus on infiltration and comms monitoring to help identify criminals, and a forensic unit that tracks and identifies possible ardat-yakshi. These lead to more carefully planned evolutions that the Justicars tend to approach with more caution.

* * *

 **JUSTICAR OPERATIONS**

Given that, in essence, each Justicar operates under their own authority, with only the loose oversight of the Justicar Mistress (whose primary input seems to be encouraging her subordinates to smash things into burning paste), formal operational types would be a misnomer to list.

However, if I am forced to collate such into rough groupings, there are three main actions the Justicars undertake.

ARREST is the pursuit of a singular criminal – and by extension, any associated parties that are needed to bring down said criminal. Given the punishment for almost every crime is either 'death' or 'painful death', there is no need for silly things like warrants, trials, or even evidence. Only truly extraordinary efforts, blatantly clear alibis backed by multiple asari who are well trusted, and very strong evidence of innocence will have any chance of turning aside a Justicar from her target, and even that is not a given. Justice, in the eyes of the Order, is basically submission to the will of the Order.

CLEANSING is the pursuit and execution of ardat-yakshi – and more disturbingly, anyone who has fallen under their sway. A subset of ardat-yakshi are styled ardat-rekshi, or 'daywind'. These are lesser beings who do not always kill their melded partners, instead crippling them and feeding from their strength. Some ardat-rekshi build massive cults, relying on the strength of mass melds to prevent the damage to their partners from reaching crippling levels while enhancing their own power. Justicars who discover such 'daywind' tend to kill everyone involved as 'corrupted'. They also pursue normal ardat-yakshi, hounding them to the edges of asari space and beyond.

REVETMENT is the use of the Justicars to 'clean up' events, based on the orders of the Thirty. This can be anything from killing a prepared member of the Nightwind to boost the image of the Justicars as heroes to eliminating alien intelligence assets. The Justicars act in the service of 'stability of the Republic' when in this form of mission, and once again, the insane dicta of the Second and Third Order mean restraint is not an issue.

Revetment missions are almost always given to more senior Justicars who have a clearer understanding of the truth of the Order and its goals. Depending on the target and reasons – at least one Spectre was very nearly killed by Justicars – their range of pursuit and level of mayhem varies.

* * *

 **FINAL THOUGHTS**

You may think the Justicars do not belong in this document, but they are included for the reasons I already stated – and because they are, in their own way, monstrous.

The Commissars have their dark acts and their own issues, but many Commissars appear to be, at least in my own interactions, people striving for actual justice, decency and – dare I say it – appropriate retribution. The Commissars have neither pity nor mercy, but they will at least admit they have made mistakes, and many of them do not let presumptions of guilt unbalance their judgment any more than presumptions of innocence.

The Justicars, on the other hand, see every being as a potential criminal, and have no ability to 'set aside' the Code outside of rare circumstances. I would suggest that any purported 'legal enforcement group' with clearly extra-legal powers and a writ to uphold a societal and justice system literally thousands of years out of date is not acting anywhere along the lines of the Commissars.

It's funny, when you think about it. Asari are so big on communality, on group culture, on denial of leadership to a single few in favor of achieving wide agreement, and yet they are all too often held in check by strictures and empowered to do things that disrupt such unity.

A part of me dismisses this as yet more hypocrisy from a race of sex-addicted sluts … but that is discounting the real issue.

When the Thirty have skewed 'justice' to be little more than 'their will', when they have perverted the very organization that is designed to ensure asari lead lives in harmony with the needs of all to instead enforce that which only maintains the Primacy of the Thirty, and when their chosen officers of law are themselves brainwashed and mind-jacked into compliance – one has to wonder at what point asari society will simply splinter.

Trellani's own plans to take apart the Republic, to drown it in civil war, death and retribution, and to use the chaos to throw down the Thirty seemed delusional to me at first, what with the asari fixation on 'all being one' and the rest of the siariast garbage religion. Now I begin to understand the subtle nature of the fracture points in asari society and why such a plan might not only work but actually redeem the asari.

Justicars are exceedingly dangerous, Mr. Harper. Their combat abilities are something I'm not the best person to judge, but their outlook and police powers are what make them a threat we should not ignore.


	4. Asari Discerning

**The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: HELNET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS...CLEAR**

 **SYSFILL 393920-ADD-NINE:** **Cross check complete**

 **DAEDALUS-SEVEN-NINE-TWO :: MINSTA-792**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE...ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: MINSTA**

The Thirty have a tendency to overlook the uses and contributions of the clanless, and have made every effort to curtail their inputs into the actual running of the Asari Republic. From the way they have interjected themselves into the e-democracy to the subtle fact that every fleet leader, ambassador and most of the influential asari CEO's are members of the Thirty or at least the Clans, they've achieved this goal.

As such, the lack of any sort of large-scale 'intelligence' organ is not as surprising as you might think. Large scale asari anything would require clanless participation, and that is not going to happen in any of the tools the Thirty use to control their subjects. Additionally, given their cultural background, what with their use of linking, bonds and the like, a distinct culture of 'espionage' would be highly difficult to form. They learned the concept from the salarians, and were quick to understand that matching salarian skill at such would be difficult.

That being said, they have learned to leverage the ability of asari in some situations to gather intelligence – and more importantly, how some aliens think and react – by use of their unique biology and methods of sex. As both the Nightwind and the Justicars are reactive forces, they obviously need a third set of operatives to identify their targets for them, as well as a more subtle hand to take actions that don't require blood-slicked, psychotic killers.

I am not sure what the formal name of this group might be, and there may not be one, aside from the one given to it in rumor. It seems to be comprised mostly of the younger daughters of Lesser Houses and a few of the Clans, roughly organized under the leadership of an asari matriarch, G'thes T'Armal. A cousin of Thana T'Armal, G'thes is roughly the same age and is rarely seen in public.

Her group of agents has no fixed organization, no uniforms, no official sanction. They operate in shadows, and the bulk of them have fake memories and other unsavory mental alterations performed on them so they don't even know what they are doing. Seeded into the novue riche of the Citadel, of Bekenstein, of the Silver Rim, of Palaven, they mingle and mix, gathering a wide array of snippets of memories, understandings, and hints.

The leaders of this organization ritualistically meld, with sexual and cultish overtones, with their agents, extracting this information and picking through it in order to find things of use, which are then informally handed off to the Nightwind or the Justicars as needed. An elegant, sickening application of their cultural views, the faint rumors of this group call them the Discerning.

 **Cerberus Thought of the Day:** Expectation of events shorn of perspective and context will always result in invalid and incorrect assumptions.

* * *

 **THE HISTORY OF THE DISCERNING**

As can be imagined, uncovering the history of such an eclectic and scattered group is difficult. Amusingly, we don't have to. Certain penetrations of the STG thanks to the actions of Rasa gave us a series of files the Union had put together on the Discerning.

They were first noticed by the STG around CY 1100. I find this timing suspiciously close to when the Nightwind was 'officially' shut down, and I suspect the group was originally pulled together for the specific purpose of supporting that group of monsters. The STG seemed to think they may have originated even earlier than that, but not in such a widespread fashion. My own gut tells me they were around before that date as well, but primary employed in other fashions – namely, warping the asari themselves to adore and worship the Thirty.

The primary targets of the group have changed slowly over time, but the methodology and purpose has shifted radically. They originally focused on asari interests, identifying targets and the like for the Nightwind, and later on targeted aliens of importance. The STG was able to counter such clumsy acts fairly easily, and after a century or two, the target profile shifted abruptly.

They began to become less direct, and focused the most on salarian inventors and independent merchants, turian separatist leaders, and (later on) those drell leaders who did not toe the Hanar line. When humans hit the scene they focused on biotic dissidents and other malcontents. Their goal seems to have been to changed from merely locating targets to trying to influence breakaway movements, to encourage enclaves of aliens to move into the Republic and to ascertain the powers and skills of other races.

The asari never bothered (and still do not) with attempting to penetrate military leadership systems. As a rule, the asari disdain military force as a fulcrum, seeing it only as a method of defense and a waste of time if they can maneuver others – such as the turians – into doing the heavy lifting. Nor do they waste time trying to penetrate intelligence agencies or even government leaders. I suspect the former don't even really register and the latter is simply too high visibility.

Instead they began to target figures that made no sense. Poets, songwriters, fiction authors. Certain criminal syndicates and mental health professionals. Some business leaders, but never in leading industries, always in small sectors of the economy. Religious leaders and entertainment personalities. The STG has puzzled over this behavior and came to the same conclusions I did.

Asari do not see 'war' as a conflict of weapons, of soldiers, or of battlefields. They see it as a conflict of cultures, of memes and influence, of inputs and the aspects of media and daily life that shape and change people. Asari seek to warp and corrupt the very foundations of what culture is to a given race, the very things that shape and change public perception.

In a way, such a tactic is fiendishly clever. The Alliance has long been paranoid of asari infiltration of the military chain of command, going so far as to utterly prohibit anyone of higher command ranks from even linking to asari. Some still do so, but most of this is done at the Citadel with the Consort's people. The AIS apparently has such damaging blackmail on the Consort (something the STG is investigating) that they feel she is unlikely to violate the Alliance's trust.

Likewise, the Alliance has taken some minor steps to block access by asari to government officials. But not the targets I mentioned above. The targets that provide guidance to our daily lives. Who influence what our children want to grow up to be like. That provide the songs on the extranet you listen to when you go to your job, that writes the science fiction novels and shows that all too often shape opinion on alien races. The comedians that you laugh at in a bar, and the celebrities that dominate our daily gossip.

Clever bitches. The very insidious nature of such a campaign is concealed in our own cultural bias, our own blind belief in what we see as important, so that we don't have any such defense against it.

At any rate, the penetrations have evolved organically over time. STG activity plotting shows the Discerning focus on several races at once, but usually the majority of their effort is bent to one race at a time. This does make sense – organizing and correlating the mass of whatever they get from bonds across a hundred or two hundred blue sluts must take some time to produce actionable intelligence, and is only complicated by trying to resolve such across the difference in races and cultures.

In recent years, the shifts have become even _more_ dramatic. Having laid a groundwork of cultural penetration and understanding of alien mindset, they now seek to shape and control the presentation of such mindsets. An example : turian 'artists' have not been an honored grouping for centuries, yet recently many such artists increasingly are leaving turian space and entering the Republic, where they are highly honored – and produce turian specific art that has a certain impact on that species.

Said art has begun, very slowly, to become popular in outlying turian regions and those who disdain the Primarchy, invoking messages that undermine turian control over them, altering certain musical trends and literary aspects. And the turians, who of course see such things as pointless, don't even see the danger.

They are crafting, for lack of a better word, cultural engines, to allow them to generate as needed the weapons they need to damage our cultures. While this is bad enough, combined with the point of view it takes to utilize such as the Nightwind and the draconian social stultification enforced by the Justicars, their longer-term goals – for the clanless and for aliens – chill me.

* * *

 **THE GOAL OF THE DISCERNING**

Bluntly put : the acquisition of information, of understanding alien mentalities to find and utilize such information, the control and manipulation of cultural and artistic efforts to allow the application of such information. Ultimately, to shape and change the viewpoint of others towards asari and identify targets that can be further twisted or must be destroyed.

This is all accomplished under the aegis of their secondary goal, which is to leave no evidence of this methodology, no organization to counter-penetrate, no good ways to block or counter such access and alterations.

One could potentially posit a third goal, of sorts : monitoring social trends within the Republic to ensure no threats to the Thirty are allowed, and to identify and neutralize shifts in culture that might bring about such threats. For such an artistically expressive people who claim they prize free thought and e-democracy and unity, have you noticed there are no lampoons of their government?

Protests occur, of course – but most of these are, indeed, aimed as external issues. Even the goddamned TURIANS have political satire of their leaders, depicting the Primarch as an axe-dragging throwback to earlier evolutionary periods. Hanar have dissident priests that mock the Illuminated Primacy all the time. Asari political humor tends towards little more than vapid gossip and speculation of what kind of depraved sexual antics House Vabo will commit next with the Eldfells.

* * *

 **OPERATIONAL CONTROL**

From what little we can determine, and the records of the STG, the aforementioned Matriarch G'thes and a small circle of lesser house Matriarchs form the highest ranks, each one responsible for a handful of overseers.

These overseers in turn collate the memories and link experiences of their teams of operatives. Yes, in essence, that means the overseers are little more than gang-bang organizers. Most of them are on a vast amount of mind-stabilization drugs and require constant assistance from mind-healers of the Temple to keep stable. Even for asari, the amount of deep melds they go through on a daily basis is … excessive.

An overseer might have as many as two hundred such asari 'operatives' answering to her. Intelligence extraction requires melding with each one to a level where memories can be shared and remembered, then linking to the matriarch to allow her to examine and ruminate on such. As a result, the same black-market chemical methods used by some Traverse slavers to place asari into a permanent state of 'openness' – that is, flared openings in the back near the azure and the blackened eyes – are something most of these overseers are conditioned with.

Even so, I cannot dismiss the overseers as mere sex addicts. Each one has to be trained in certain esoteric skills to absorb memories from a meld rapid, to implant deep seated alterations to the agent's memory to control their actions, and to implement post-hypnotic suggestions to act as a further control over the agent.

The operatives themselves have a tendency to pick their own targets, moving from opportunity to opportunity. Some of them are given specific tasks to complete, others are told to simply meld with a certain kind of target. There are no hard and fast rules or directions employed – or if there are, such is conveyed through yet more melding.

Agents are not aware of what they are doing, as I said : a mix of several methods is used to ensure they are acting in the fashion their masters wish, but even heavy torture can't break them because they have no idea they are being used. In their minds, the relationships they enter into are real, and their emotional attachment to their targets is equally real. This is a truly insidious and clever way to ensure the operation is almost never discovered – counter penetrating such is basically impossible as we have no way to ascertain which asari are just having a fling or a short romance and which are spies.

* * *

 **DISCERNING MEMBERSHIP**

The entire group is almost completely comprised of, as I said, daughters of various Lesser Houses, particularly those of the House of Storms. This has some variation – most operatives sent to salarian space are actually from Clan Steelshape, for example. But all of the matriarchs in the group are at least of Lesser Houses, if not the Thirty directly.

Overseers are usually disappointments to the family, being put to a use that allows them little chance to do more than mindlessly screw all day and sleep around, giving them little chance to further embarrass the House.

The bulk of the 'operators' are also Lesser House maidens, although a handful of the Clans can be involved in some tasks. No clanless are ever used by this group for any reason – unsurprising, given the fact that quite often the targets of the group are themselves clanless.

* * *

 **DISCERNING COMBAT DOCTRINE**

It is almost unheard of for the Discerning to engage in combat. Almost none of them are trained combatants in a physical sense, and upon discovery most have been conditioned to kill themselves.

That being said, given all asari are at least capable and competent at biotic usage, it never pays to assume.

* * *

 **DISCERNING EQUIPMENT**

At least some of the Discerning are equipped with gray-boxes and dosed with anti-regeneration drugs, operating as (among other things) more conventional spies. The addition of so-called 'blackboxes', grayboxes especially designed for remote viewing and analysis, is a more recent development – and a troubling one, considering the source of the technology is from NOVENSILES.

For the most part, however, the Discerning operate as civilians, and thus have no real equipment loadouts to speak of. They are highly unusual in that for an intelligence agency they have no actual ability for combat power, operating purely as information gatherers, not assassins or saboteurs. Again, the alien will do things in an alien fashion.

* * *

 **DISCERNING TACTICS**

For most of their operational acts, the sluts are dispatched solo to locate their targets. Conventional seduction is the most common tactic, but on occasion they will simply seek to learn information, pick up clues, or even attempt a better understanding of the culture of the target.

For more complicated efforts, the Discerning will flood a target with their agents – in attempting to manipulate a particular cultural trend, for example, they may send dozens of agents to seduce all of the people affecting it. As ridiculous as this may sound on its face, kindly take a look on any given day at GTMZ and look at how many celebrities have an asari on their arm. By God it's considered almost gauche in certain literary and musical circles to not have an asari 'collaborator' in artistic endeavors.

* * *

 **DISCERNING OPERATIONS**

I'm afraid there is little we can … discern about such things.

I apologize for the pun. I've perhaps had a bit too much to drink after going over the Nightwind and Justicar data. In any event, most of the acts these whores partake in fall into four very rough categories.

OBTAINMENT is their act of attaching themselves to a target to meld with them. From my understanding, in most situations light linking transfers only sensations and the flash of an occasional surface memory, with most melds only sharing a few. But the Discerning have been given special training to use the euphoria and pleasure of sexual melding to allow them more access to a living being's memories, and specific skills to go rifling through them and find what they are looking for – quite often without the target realizing anything at all.

This process is neither instant or singular – the asari agent will usually spend anywhere from six months to years with the target, slowly obtaining information.

ALTERATION is usually mixed with the above mission, and is using their influence on their target's lives, their deep knowledge of how the target thinks, and certain mental alteration tricks to shift the target's perspectives, acts, beliefs, or goals. The insidious nature of this objective is dificult to achieve in short time frames, and combined with an obtainment mission, is often measured in years.

RECTIFICATION is the process of breaking off contact for short periods of time with a contact to return to asari space and meet with an overseer to 'offload' their take. As I've said, the primary protection of the field agents is that they are not aware they are acting as intelligence sources. These meetings are implanted with a mix of post-hypnotic suggestion and mental tinkering, and are urges combined with back-story manipulation. A lesser daughter might be called back to the family for 'discussions about her future' and actually engage in such a thing, with only one meld with the overseer in question lasting less than an hour departing from that.

Managing the agents is part of this process, as it appears the overseers also implant new suggestions on how to manipulate their targets while absorbing the memories of their agents.

PREPARATION is the generic task of sending out agents to familiarize themselves with cultural trends, to identify targets to seduce, and general information gathering. It is a fairly low key task, usually undertaken by a subset of the standard agents.

* * *

 **FINAL WORDS**

Mr. Harper, when I originally wrote up the asari section, I mentioned the dismay I had at the asari mindset, their outlook on life and their propensity for perverting things into that which they could use to their own benefit. I cannot imagine Matriarch Trellani has much to say of a kindly or positive nature in regards to the Thirty or their actions.

After reviewing the sorts of things they utilize in their pursuit of control and power, however, an epiphany comes to me, one that leaves me somewhat apprehensive and, I will admit, more than a little paranoid.

The asari – or the Thirty, more properly – have been manipulating culture and influencing races for centuries now. And despite the tactical brilliance and skill at espionage of the salarian, the sheer military might and unbreaking spirit of the turian, the vast wealth and near-magical ability to manipulate wealth and economic factors of the volus – despite the Hanar having mysterious technologies and an entire race of assassins – the asari remain ascendant.

Their dominance is so absolute that one cannot even conceive of a Citadel culture not overshadowed by it. They disdain military power and yet their fleet could probably wreck that of any other race. They do not prize profit or money but their economy is only exceeded by the volus, and not by much. And now we discover, in essence, their intelligence aspect is equal parts sickening, terrifying, and cleverly hidden and subtle.

I have to ask how much of their ability to dominate is due to the asari simply being much better at multitasking and assimilating the knowledge and skills of other races? Something Trellani has said bothers me, the idea that the asari see themselves as organizing knowledge and perfecting themselves on a continual basis.

The Discerning should send chills down your spine, not because of anything particularly gruesome in their ends – although the manipulation of agents is rather cold-blooded. No, the very concept that they have plans to manipulate and shape cultures in such a fashion over long periods of time has finally opened my eyes to their truly long view on such things.

We cannot hope, honestly, to fend off the depredations of a race who makes their plans over the time scale of millennia. The gulf is simply too vast, and the more time they have the more space they have to sink their claws into the very spirit of our people, as they no doubt have done to other races.

The STG should have seen the Discerning as the highest possible threat – but the report doesn't read that way. The AIS has a segment of their people specifically assigned to catch asari infiltration attempts – they knew nothing about this. I cannot imagine the turians are blind to the sort of manipulations the asari love to inflict – and I see no evidence they are any more aware, or prepared, for this than the Alliance.

Even your own manifesto expected violations in military, economic and intelligence asset terms, not … cultural warfare, infomemetic conquest, or the shape alteration of the very definitions of what it means to be human, or salarian, or krogan. The threat of the asari is they have all the time in the world to look at things in a fashion and from a direction none of the rest of us have ever considered.

Given the opaque nature of the highest levels of asari society, and the lack of internal communication networks obliviated by their use of linking, there may be more concealed and vastly disturbing asari operations under the blanket of their normal day to day activities. The asari remain like some vile, disturbing flower, where each petal only reveals more of the nightmare within as it slowly flowers.

I have decided, Mr. Harper, that my time would be better spent on the take from the research Vigil is doing into clone functionality. I need some time with hard science to clear my head and give me some distance from what I have spent the past few days reviewing, if at all possible. I believe both General Petrovsky and Rasa have indicated an interest in discussing various intelligence organs with you. Brooks has done the same, but frankly, sir, Brooks is … just a disturbing individual on every goddamned level.

I think her polymorphic personality and ability to be anyone reminds me too much of the asari for my taste. In any event, I have submitted, along with this report, the STG file in question. The translation from the cant was done by Trellani so some of it is still a mystery to us – the surprising suggestion from a man like Ezno that we 'acquire' an embittered salarian as a resource in translating such documents is not a bad idea, although as a rule I dislike infesting Cerberus with alien aspects.

As for the asari … I find myself saying something I never thought I would. Give Matriarch Trellani whatever resources she needs – including my own time and expertise, if needed – to obliterate the goddamned Thirty as fast as possible before they get us all either killed or turn us into slaves. They are incredibly dangerous, and the though strikes me that if the Reapers are as good at indoctrination as is postulated, if they were to indoctrinate the Thirty this fight against them would be over far before it even got off the ground.

This isn't even racism, Mr. Harper. It is self-preservation and survival.


	5. Turian Deathwatch

**The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: HELNET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS...CLEAR**

 **SYSFILL 1129584-SUB-FIVE:** _ **Cross check complete**_

 **ARISTOTLE-SIX-ONE-NINE :: PETROVSKY-619**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE...ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: PETROVSKY**

Jack, old friend. Good to hear from you. I must admit, this is a rather unusual request, and this is coming from me, who has been dealing with your unusual requests for years. At least I don't have to sneak aboard some godforsaken hell-hole in the end of space and knife a damned turian this time.

The good doctor Minsta has been working on these files of yours for some time, I understand – I remember reading the section regarding turian military tactics with some interest. Never asked to contribute before, but then again, my specialties are a bit narrow for such wide-ranging discussions. I've read his most recent works, and I'm both impressed with the amount he's uncovered and slightly amused at the man's continued lack of intestinal fortitude. Funny how he can cold-bloodedly cut up grays and blues with nary a batted eyelash, but seeing the reasons behind why we do it reduces him to a stuttery drunk.

No matter.

Now that I've laid the groundwork for Revenant's military response capability - thanks to Vigil - I am once again without much to do aside from chess. I know you disagree with me on the placement and use of direct action forces in achieving our goals, but if your stunt succeeds, Shepard will need more than a single ship to get the job done. I strongly advise you to go along with the Inusannon AI's suggestions of an entire fleet and a field army of war robots.

(As an aside, the AI is worryingly competent at both grand strategy and squad level tactics. I'll discuss my suspicions next time I see you in person.)

Rachel no doubt soured you on some the applications of both force and military strike power, but I honestly think your reluctance to openly employ such things has more to do with the mess on Shanxi. Maybe that sounds cold, but I've known you for longer than anyone else in Cerberus. The man you've withdrawn into isn't you, Jack. You once were as ready to crack heads and get your own hands dirty as Ben or I.

I range afield from my topic.

Studying the dark arts of our enemies – and _all_ aliens in my eyes are enemies, no matter how fascinating their culture or benign their intent – will always be of great use. Understanding how they react in the battlefields we play in – political, economic, strategic, and as the doctor pointed out to us, cultural – is critical at identifying both our weak spots and our blind spots.

Minsta has done a good job thus far, but the man's right about his lack of a certain experience when it comes to black ops. Not to mention he's never quite gotten over what happened at Minuteman with those Nightwind. He's done some good work on the asari groups – if with his usual invective – but I have long and ugly personal experience with the Deathwatch. His points are fully on target when it comes to the alien nature of how many races look at black ops – although I can at least say the turians are less _repulsive_ about it than the asari would appear to be.

I won't let myself get so emotionally overwrought that I need a stiff drink to write the report, either. I'll use his framework, though – no sense trying to recreate the wheel.

* * *

 **ORIGINS OF THE DEATHWATCH**

Turians are a funny people, if fascist humor and genocidal punch lines are the joke.

I think turian history is a pile of agit-prop put together by true masters of the twisted spoken word, polished like a turian's gizzard stone by years of careful lies and equally cautious physical revisionism. Turians for a long time relied on the Cabals to do their sneaking about in the dark, but they never really trusted them. The Kabalim made no secret of their belief that they would be better masters of the turians than the Palavanus or the Hierarchy, and several bloody wars were required to bring them to heel.

Given the cabals had about as much use for honor as asari do for hairspray, it's no surprise that the Hierarchy wanted something a bit more inline with their own beliefs to enact their will. Pel makes a good point about the spikes - they're stubborn and hardheaded, but they are not blind or stupid. The manipulation of the salarians and the asari was plain to see. Problem was, the Palavanus weren't doing anything to stop it. From what I got out of Pel, they made it sound as if the Hierarchy was expected to evolve and change to deal with such problems while retaining the core of the systems enforced on them in regards to honor and such.

The first iteration of how to deal with the problem was to reorganize a few of the cabals into remote strike groups, but this didn't go very well. The military gave it a shot, by organizing a special forces group that eventually evolved into the Blackwatch – devoted to safeguarding turian interests.

The core honor credo for the Blackwatch was as close to any alien culture came up with to mirroring Cerberus. Blackwatch was to prevent turian society from collapsing and ensure the turian lifestyle was not invalidated by 'invasive elements'. Unfortunately, Blackwatch tried to do this while remaining tied to honorable concepts and without 'sneaking about like barefaces'. And as time went by, they became more and more obsessed with both operational perfection and exemplifying what it meant to be a turian and less about covert operation defense.

Against the wiles of the STG and the sickness of the Nightwind you can imagine how well that went.

About five hundred years ago, the turian Praetor Ghelxis Naris – a maverick if there ever was one in turian terms, as he was in a relationship with an exiled salarian dalatrass for almost twenty years and adopted a krogan child – decided he'd dealt with enough of the STG's shit. To borrow some of Pel's perspective, the only reason Naris wasn't thrown out of the Hierarchy was sheer, raging badassery, and he eventually came up with a plan to stop the STG at its own game – whether the Hierarchy liked it or not. Using his wife's ideas as a baseline, he took a series of turian orphans and began an intensive training camp.

The core concepts of the camp were simple: honor was something one had to earn to be able to uphold, and one had to maintain an honorable life style to be afforded that recognition. Honor was not something an alien deserved to be treated with if they would not reciprocate, and doing so actually was in and of itself dishonorable, since it rewarded failure, greed and lies instead of honor, sacrifice and determination.

While this sort of stance would be normally be seen as dishonorable for the turians, that lack of honor was a sacrifice they were expected to make for the Hierarchy. Sacrifice was always honorable when done in the name of the turian people. Combined with various harsh training methodologies and (I strongly suspect) some form of mind altering drugs, Naris created a group of turians who could be honorable when dealing with other turians – and who downright delighted in being dishonorable with aliens.

Such a development was, of course, for some reason counter to what the Palavenus intended for turian society, most likely because of the chance such turians would discard honor altogether. As such, they opposed the program heavily, and as a result the Hierarchy was skeptical of the results at first. The turians in the group were giving horrific Trials to test their bravery and loyalty, and to sharply question when honor was needed and when it was not. Naris himself was challenged by another Praetor, who he, well, literally dismantled in short order, proving his 'right' to do as he wished. When the group passed all the trials and no one could gainsay Naris in the dueling arena, he was asked a single question.

When asked what purpose such (by turian terms) sociopaths could be put to, Naris gave a chilling answer. "Any purpose that is required. They do not value life, only its ending and the Hierarchy's survival."

They became the Deathwatch, and immediately began to act, cutting through the STG cells inciting colonial violence. They were of course written off as criminals, or 'outcasts', or shown to be having violent mental breaks. And they were surprisingly successful in two methods.

First, in their actions, they were capable of matching the casual atrocity of the Nightwind and the breathtaking immorality of the STG when it came to 'reacting' to events. Secondly, even the presence of such a group made the salarians and asari back off, clearly surprised by the development, and to look at turian people and acts with new eyes and a grudging respect.

For a good two centuries turians were inducted at random from orphanages, their lives and all evidence of their existence obliterated, and sent off to die for the glory of the Hierarchy. They eventually won the trust of the Primarchs, and at long last, even the Palavanus. They were immensely proud to do so, and the Palavanus, always quick to see an advantage, did not miss this. In a touch of macabre showmanship (and possibly irony), each member of the Deathwatch was given a special honor called a hraxal by the Palavanus.

Roughly translated to something like "Imperial Honor Guard", a hraxal is a dispensation of any act undertaken in the defense of the people, and a solemn promise by the Palavanus as a whole to plead to intercede with the spirits to see that turian's acts in the best possible light. It has overtones of the same sort of things we saw in certain Islamic terrorist networks in the early twenty first century, promising a lifetime of virgins if they died martyrs, or the cynical dispensations of the Catholic Popes in Europe's Crusades, saying any man who died in such an act would proceed straight to Heaven.

It made the Deathwatch fearless. Or even _more_ fearless than before. They laughed at certain death and howled with barely civilized glee when unleashed like the hounds of hell upon the Hierarchy's enemies. Eventually as the STG pulled back, and the various separatists took on more distasteful methods, the Hierarchy's needs grew, and the Deathwatch took on other unsavory duties, such as policing the Cabals, crushing rebellion, and killing off certain colony leaders who incited trouble.

The Deathwatch was always cruelly brutal, and as time went by it became more and more of an open secret of their existence. Proving such a thing was almost impossible in any court of law, of course, and thus the game was played, until about sixty years ago.

Then, for still unknown reasons, the Deathwatch was made a formal part of the turian military. Their training was standardized, their unit given formal dispensations from turian law by both the Hierarchy and the Palavanus, and strict guidelines as to how they would be used were established. Two generations of strong leaders attempted to 'temper' the Deathwatch from suicide-assassins into an actual fighting force.

They were, sadly, not very successful in the long run, although the public's perception was certainly changed. The main driver of such attempts, Tyrtahn Vakarian, was killed in a Facinus attack. His successor, Venari Pallin, made a better tale of it. For the first time, instead of depending solely on brainwashed orphans, an officer corps was built of veteran Blackwatch members and prominent lesser sons of the Clans and Families, especially those who had troubles ascending up the meritocracy in conventional ways.

During Pallin's leadership, the nature of the Deathwatch changed – but only on the very surface. The 'public face' of the Deathwatch, the Family and Clan members, were extended a high honor. They were well trained and often seen in public acts of defense of the Hierarchy. But they could also move on from the Deathwatch or retire from it.

But the old Deathwatch – brainwashed orphans – was not gutted. Instead it was expanded, became more ruthless, more cold blooded. As before, they were in it for life, and no attempt to change their ways would work. Pallin attempted his best at stopping this, but was eventually gently but firmly ousted from his job. In disgust he went to join C-SEC, and your favorite turian, Desolas Arterius, was put in charge of the program.

His changes made the private, hidden face of the Deathwatch go much further into the darkness than before. His nephew, Salias, has continued this as the current commander, splitting Deathwatch acts between the 'public', fairly upstanding if ruthless face of the Deathwatch, and the atrocity-generating secret roots of the true program.

* * *

 **THE GOAL OF THE DEATHWATCH**

The Deathwatch is split into two 'halves'. These are informally called the Determinance and the Revengance. The Determinance is public, comprised of younger turian hotheads from clans and families. The Revengance remains highly secret.

The overall goal of both groups, bluntly, is the preservation of the Hierarchy. It is curious that they are not stating the preservation of _turians_ , until you realize the Deathwatch feels if the Hierarchy falls that turian culture and society will not survive. In defense and support of the Hierarchy, honor is not a concern they bother to deal with unless they interact with turians – even then, only turians who honor the Hierarchy are treated honorably in return.

In short, separatists, outcasts, rebels, and all aliens can be treated as one would a vorcha. Only those recognized by the Hierarchy are required to be treated with honor.

This probably seems like of little import to you, Jack, but a conversation with Pel should clear up why that isn't the case. A turian who does not act with honor has no limits on how his behavior reflects on him. He doesn't have to own his decisions, or respect boundaries. For a turian to see another intelligent being as not being worthy of being afforded honor is not an insult, it is a deadly danger.

Turian LAW states that if beings cannot be held to honor, it cannot be accorded any legal protections, or even assumed to be anything other than an animal. And this is why the Deathwatch is so deadly.

A secondary goal of the _public_ group is to convince turians (and aliens) that the Deathwatch is merely hardened, ruthless elite soldiers, and to provide cover for the covert group.

The _private_ group's secondary goals are more chilling – the eventual obliteration of any potential threat to the Hierarchy's survival on any of several levels, decreasing in importance – physical survival, political survival, cultural survival, and economic dominance.

* * *

 **OPERATIONAL CONTROL**

The Determinance (the public half) follows conventional turian force structures. Most public ops are overseen by seniors, with mid-rank turians acting as NCO's and junior members doing most of the work. Tasking comes from the Unbroken Circle, or from the High Primarch directly – occasionally tasks too difficult for the Blackwatch are assigned to them.

The Revengeance, on the other hand, mimics the cabal-cell structure of the biotic cabals. They are grouped into sixteen person cells – usually mated pairs – and lead by a single commander who provides all tasking for that cell. The commanders are assigned to 'circles' that are each assigned an aspect of tasks the Hierarchy needs done, divvying up such between them.

A subsection of the Deathwatch known only as the Disgraced Pride is composed entirely of Deathwatch operatives who failed their tasks and somehow still survived. Used mostly in suicidal missions, these are the craziest of the Deathwatch.

The Deathwatch Revengance has some circles actually given over to torture, experimentation, and other unsavory ends, but do not confuse it with Cerberus. Unlike us, the Deathwatch's private half does not take orders or even suggestions from the Hierarchy. Rather, the Hierarchy places a pool of targets for them to review and if the Deathwatch feels one is worth it will do so. The actual dishonorable acts or research is not condoned – or requested – by the actual Hierarchy, both for deniability and to prevent them from being stained with dishonor.

Typically speaking, the conditioning of the Revengance is enough to sicken Commissars. Raised as orphans and often only given very twisted, lying educations as to the nature of other races, and I believe probably chemical adjustment to their personality is also undertaken.

While certainly distressing, it cannot hold a candle to the horrors practiced by other races, and often is designed to actually prevent emotional or mental damage to the operatives rather than condition them into slaves. The extreme nature of it, however, is hard to bear, as it includes torture resistance training.

* * *

 **DEATHWATCH MEMBERSHIP**

The Determinance is mostly open to younger sons of turians high up in the meritocracy, who have at least twenty years experience and a flawless operational record (and a tendency towards blowing things up). Experience members of the Blackwatch can also join, usually in officer capacities. Quite often, turians being planned on submission to the Spectres are placed into the Determinance.

The Revengance is comprised of orphans and turians who cannot operate with normal turian discipline but are not outcast enough in mindset to turn their back on the Hierarchy. Each one is, of course, without family aside from the mates they acquire as part of the process, and all of them are equipped with powerful detonation charges to suicide with if they look to be in danger of capture - a stark difference from the Determinance.

From all reports, the public face of the Deathwatch numbers around sixty to seventy turians, and the private part perhaps three hundred. This is quite small for a special operations group, but they punch far, far above their weight class. The small size makes keeping the secrecy of the true nature of the operation easier.

* * *

 **DEATHWATCH COMBAT DOCTRINE**

Mobility. Shock. Penetration.

The Deathwatch hits harder in a short amount of time than almost any other military group I am aware of. They strike very fast, allowing no time for responses to come up, and usually go in with heavy sabotage strikes, fuel-air-eezo explosives, and area-effect denial weapons to spark panic and morale collapse. Given only the finest equipment and truly savage training, each one sneers at death and fears absolutely nothing, not even horrible dishonor or retreat, if that will get the job done.

So far, they have a nearly perfect operational record - 99.7%.

They are finely trained and express the martial professionalism and outstanding spirit de corps of all turians, honed to a lethal edge by long practice and a chilling disregard for life and collateral damage, even for turians. They always fight in utter silence, clad in nothing but silvery black armor with blank face plates, augmented by glowing gray-white haptics in sigils of the turian language. Each member has his or her own sigil, a call sign of sorts, that exemplifies their outlook on combat and death.

They drill to work solo, in small groups, or in bands as large as fifty. They mostly go with heavy ordinance of a disposable nature and shift to precisely targeted attacks after initial opening salvos.

* * *

 **DEATHWATCH EQUIPMENT**

Most Deathwatch equipment is of the very highest quality. Their armor is either Clan Ceremonial armor (for the Determinance) or a special sub-model of the Titan Armor known as the Falling Claw (for the Revengance). Power augmented like the Titan, it incorporates several onboard weapon systems, extra shield capacitors, and light VI enhancement, making it almost a match for the Clan armor.

Weapons vary widely. Almost all Deathwatch members carry a four-pack M-550 Hydra launcher, and as a standard sidearm wield the powerful M-903 Sunfire pistol. Side weapons include turian rifles and the like, but also elcor ion railguns, salarian BRKR cannons, and even (in a highly flattering move) human Judgement pistols and knockoffs of the ODIN shotgun.

A bewildering array of technological toys, flares, decoys, omni-weapons, placed explosives, drones, cloaking devices, contact poisons, biowarfare kits, caltrops, knives, ropes, bombs, grenades, and the good lord only knows what other forms of murderous mayhem are neatly packed away in their armor or on wide utility belts. They liberally toss such toys around, making the battle as chaotic and confusing as possible, and their helmets all have special systems to see through smoke, so they love to deploy smoke grenades.

At least two members of any cell will be professional medics, with a light medical field pack of extremely useful materials. Turian Deathwatch members are consummate professionals and pack survival rations and medical gear as a group, but the medics provide additional backstops – and plasma charges, to immolate their dead.

* * *

 **DEATHWATCH TACTICS**

Most Deathwatch deployments are small-scale missions. Recently (since the work on the SR1 Normandy) such missions are dispatched in small, IES-stealthed insertion craft – heavily armed, very fast, very nimble, no damned armor.

Deathwatch will deploy using drop-cradles or modified SKYTALON suits to achieve complete operational surprise. Larger units are often still dispatched in small groups and assemble on target, utilizing multiple attack vectors to further confuse targets.

Deathwatch planning is immaculate, with sixth and seventh level options and backup plans to backup plans considered. Each deployed unit is often shadowed by a backup team to provide additional firepower (or rescue) if needed. They leave nothing to chance and will immediately void and retreat from an op if the intel is bad (a very striking difference from most turian military stances).

Most Deathwatch members are trained to use the M-903 Sunfire pistol in short range combats, or else powerful shotguns. They are equipped with both mid and long range weapons as well, and are extremely heavily cross-trained in every possible aspect from sniping and oversight, to hacking and decryption, to battlesuit piloting, ship piloting, even space navigation.

* * *

 **DEATHWATCH OPERATIONS**

Most Deathwatch killteams are given one of five 'groups' of tasks by the Hierarchy, and tend to develop their own operations from these pools. Most Deathwatch missions are heavy assault, sabotage, or direct strike, mixed with the occasional terror bombing, assassination, or capture missions.

The pools themselves, though – Jack, my admiration for the turians rises the more I learn about them. Unlike most races, the turians tend to see black operations as a method to shape and corral enemy capabilities prior to battle, rather than the sort of sneaky stabbing in the dark the salarians and asari practice.

The pools are as follows:

ATTRACTORS: Bluntly, the execution of missions of all kinds in a given area to project the concept that the area is of importance to the Hierarchy. Given their normally straightforward actions, this seemed surprising to me, until Pel pointed out it is a likely evolution of their hunting methods. Misleading the prey from the areas where they have the advantage to an area they can be ambushed in is very smart.

ATTRITIONALS: Launching strikes at a target they plan to destroy, to both test and soften defenses and observe what kind of forces respond and reinforce the target as a method of determining its importance.

DEMONSTRATIONALS: The turians are rarely subtle when sending messages, and this sort of activity is to do just that – send a message. They will storm a target, strewing explosives and civilian casualties, bombing utilities, poisoning water supplies, etc. Their goal is to both infuriate and terrify the target – or in some cases, the target government – as well as weaken defenses for later, more targeted strikes. It is from these activities that the Deathwatch gets most of its grim reputation from.

DEEP STRIKE: The 'meat', so to speak in tactical terms, of what the Deathwatch does. The other pools are merely frameworks – deep strikes are surgically planned direct assaults, carving a path to the target, extracting or destroying the target, and gutting their way free. In some cases, the strike is a suicide mission, in which case they will inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy – in most other cases, their only goal is their target and violence is sharply limited to what is needed to accomplish the job.

DEATH WATCH: Much as the Blackwatch got their name from the so-called Black Watch, the operations where they provide security at all costs or kill themselves in shame, the Deathwatch has a special pool of tasks termed, inventively, the Death Watch. We've been unable to gather much information on this, except that it ties in with the trips the Palavanus make when convening the Council of Woe, and other rare situations. While engaged in the Death Watch, the group is more than likely to strike out at multiple distracting targets, run anti-spy and anti-infiltration jobs, and generally secure things as tightly as possible.

* * *

 **FINAL THOUGHTS:**

From a purely military standpoint, the Deathwatch are, at best, tactical irritants. There simply aren't enough of them to form a cohesive warfighting unit in any form of large-scale conflict, but I do acknowledge that isn't the point of the unit in the first place.

Compared to the sort of extremes we see in the Nightwind, the League of Zero, and the like, the Deathwatch is relatively tame. This is not actually surprising, given turian attitudes towards honor and spying.

The interesting thing is that the Deathwatch shows the turians are perfectly capable – even good – at subterfuge and infiltration, as well as dissemblement and denial operations, fallback and such. They simply place no real value on it, and to place a very false public front on it speaks to me of a deep sense of shame and uneasiness that they have been forced to this extreme in the first place.

I can admire the turians in a strictly military light. Such groups can stir up resentment among enemies, making prisoner of war issues and the treatment of civilians behind enemy lines a problematic issue. Turian attitudes towards collateral damage are already lax, so the overblown 'shoot anything that hasn't been shot to pieces' tendencies of the Deathwatch are likely to worry more senior military types in the Hierarchy.

Given what we learned of the Palavanus from Pel's reports, I also find it curious they changed their mind on the nature of the Deathwatch and went along with it, when they savagely stamp out any other forms of subterfuge or the like in the turian species. That is the sticking point that continues to trouble me, as I cannot define a reason why they would do so.

The opacity of the Revengance towards public scrutiny, and the number of methods they use to prevent any identification of the Deathwatch's true operatives from public discovery, does show a possibility – I can only presume the average turian would be horrified at such dishonorable behavior and would react quite strongly to the idea that the Primarchs were behind such a thing.


	6. Volus Unseen Cloud

**The Cerberus Files, Tactical Agenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: BEGIN HELNET ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS…CLEAR**

 **HERA-ONE-SEVEN-FOUR: TIFFANY-174**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE…ACKNOWLEDGEMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: TIFFANY MINSTA**

* * *

Sir, let me begin by thanking you for allowing me to join. My father – and to a lesser degree, my House – have long been supporters of yours, but the recent chaos has made situations more complicated than they should have been. Cerberus remains vital to the survival of both humans as people as well as humanity's greater interests. While I can't say I'm entirely pleased by the presence of certain elements in the Revenant Cell, it has been made very clear to me that I won't have to interact with them.

And now, my assignment.

Given my own focus on finance, I can clearly understand why Father asked me to take over this write up. It was not as dangerous as he worried about - and I had Mr. Leng accompanying me, which was both comforting and ... discomfiting. Nevertheless, I think what I've learned is of vital importance - not just because of the volus being discounted, but because of their goals not ever being looked at.

I have read my father's words on perspective, and those of General Petrovsky on alien natures – and they're both right and in my perhaps biased opinion, both wrong.

There is nothing wrong with looking at the universe from a lens of human perspective – as long as you don't let said lens delimit or blind you to the truth. Such is the case with the volus. We may not be able to fully grasp their point of view but I argue that we do not need to do that - only what their actions are likely to inflict on humanity!

While I was certainly amused at the idea of 'volus special forces' at first, the more I studied the more I realized that even the Volus aren't immune to the sickness of the galaxy. Alien filth comes in many different unpleasant flavours, but I would say the volus have the dubious distinction of being amoral enough to commit atrocity and yet greedy enough to see that as the price of doing business.

Most casual observers think of the Volus as a meek and unthreatening prey species, a herd of obese moneygrubbers unstoppable at a betting table or buffet but utterly useless in any military scenario. How could they pose any kind of intelligence or security threat? They're just bankers and businesspeople. They're just mouth-breathing punch lines and comic relief on shitty Westerlund network sitcoms (the kind with laugh tracks). Yes, their economy is the envy of the galaxy and even the poorest of them live a life most SA citizens (read: lowborn trash. Ew.) would literally kill for, but they can't hurt us.

These casual observers are so very, very wrong, in a way that they will never understand and never see coming.

Volus see all of this as a hilarious alien failure to properly measure risk, market environments and value, and the Unseen Cloud is their response.

Taken from a difficult-to-translate saying of the Vol-clans inhabiting Irune's highest floating land formations (in English the phrase roughly means "the bountiful reward of those daring to risk all in the unseen clouds", but misses the subtle meanings that indicate the risks are rarely actually worth said rewards), the Unseen Cloud is unlike anything any other alien species operates. Whilst Volus culture, reasoning and morals seem very different to our own, do not think they are no more than greedy cowards. They're alien freaks undeserving of breathing human air, true, but that doesn't mean they're stupid or incompetent. And unlike other aliens, they're actually polite enough to not breathe our air, so that's a point for them.

The entire point of these files is to do what the Shadow Cell could never do and gaze objectively upon the alien. You must see them as they are, not what you want them to be, and so you must set aside any preconceived thought that could smear the truth. Volus will take astounding risks if they believe the potential outcome justifies it. They have made sacrifices for their clan and corporation that no other alien would even consider. Despite the stereotypes spread by so much human media, Volus can possess a strong sense of _noblesse oblige_ – like a proper noble family – and prominent combines and clans often fund charitable contributions or act as patrons of the arts in alien space. Throw away every preconception you have of what a black operation is or could be.

The Unseen Cloud is not a military force, a special operations detachment, or an intelligence agency, despite every single one of them being a product of the same training and biological development process as each member of the Volus Defence Force. The Unseen Cloud is a socio-cultural-economic operational network that is designed to engineer alien markets in order to profit Volus interests. Do not mistake them for some clumsy group of margin traders, or the Wall Street tycoons of the pre-Iron Age – they are far, far more sophisticated, in the same way that mass effect travel is more sophisticated than walking. They don't exploit alien markets – they shape and craft them before the aliens even realise there IS a market – and they do not view such things as humans or others do. We see a market as involving free individuals making rational choices regarding the production and consumption of scarce resources. Volus see markets as an expression of existence itself, of activity and work and matter and energy and emotion all interacting together to generate profit, the bounty of life. Product or service specific markets, as well as resource and financial interactions, are simply a tiny manifestation of this overarching ontology. It is possibly the strangest expression of a black operations group in the entire galaxy.

* * *

 **Origins**

As far as we can tell, the Unseen Cloud was born out of the frustration the Vol Protectorate's High Corporate Court felt with the sneering condescension and offhand dismissal of the Volus by the Citadel races. The Hierarchy's obsessive focus on talon-beating militarism and direct confrontation was particularly rankling. The Volus chief executives at the time felt that these alien valuations were exceedingly crude and barbaric, an opinion held by almost all Volus to this day, but they knew they would simply not be taken seriously by the other races unless they developed blunter and more aggressive means of shaping their environment. (This same thinking, incidentally, led to the development of the modern VDF – and who can blame them? The alien corrupts everything it touches, and should be purged with fire whilst I sip my icewine and laugh). Keep in mind that it is not the immorality of such things that offends Volus; for God's sake, look at their reaction to the First Contact War. They didn't care in the slightest that tens of millions of innocent humans died horrifically, that these people's remains can't even be buried in a marked grave because they're all free-floating atoms, or that our entire species was traumatized by the atrocities of hypocritical alien bird monsters. No, what the Vol High Court found offensive was that they were not consulted on this course of action and that it was carried out by oh-so-clumsy military means with no serious regard for the long term economic consequences.

The Unseen Cloud was forced to be reactive. From what little we now know of their operations, this was probably a blessing. The earliest reliable evidence we have of their operations is from approximately three hundred years ago, when the Vol Protectorate decided to deploy them against the primary Facinus separatist clusters. We do not know how long the organisation was operating for prior to this incident.

The Unseen Cloud, acting via money laundering front companies in on Omega, hired mercenary groups to pillage key Facinus trade lanes and used their own hacking operatives to sabotage Facinus financial records and transaction accounts in order to temporarily shatter the separatists cash flow and ability to organise and manage their resource inventories . Naturally the Volus had shorted their (clandestine) Facinus holding just prior to this, and had taken out credit default and shipping insurance on the holdings in question. Facing a critical shortage of credits, eezo, medigel and militarily significant metals, the Facinus cluster fell into political chaos and was, for a short time, devastated by the cunning actions of the Deathwatch (at the time under the command of Talor Vakarian, Regilus Vakarian's grandsire). Needless to say the High Primarch was very pleased, and also shocked that "finally, those spirits-forsaken fools on Irune have actually had a kinetic effect on a battlefield without me having to shove a talon up their ass first".

I say 'for a short time' because the Unseen Cloud began to sell said critical materials to the Facinus rebels via P. at a staggering 800% mark up _after_ having gone long on derivative futures for those same shipping routes. They poured the profits into their fledgling biotic program and into Citadel-backed securities issued to the Turian Hierarchy, furthering their control and influence over Turian markets and improving their relations with the Salarians and Asari.

The vast majority of alien observers – and even some intelligence and security agencies! – dismiss these kinds of operations as mere business, but you of all people know the value of subtle influence and action, sir. On their first operation – _that we know of_ – the Unseen Cloud was playing the Turian Hierarchy, Facinus Separatists, P., AND the Citadel all at once and not just getting away with it, but getting paid for it. Remember that Volus do not view profit, markets or business in the same way that we do; the fact that they made money off of this operation is entirely incidental, since the overall objective was to shape the real-space environment in such a way as to maximise Volus interests without any other party even being aware that they were being played. Profit in the form of credits is simply a bonus, and all Volus love bonuses.

This is merely one example. They've funded sex slave trafficking in the Terminus Systems, backed Eclipse's red sand and counterfeit eezo manufacturing facilities, aided the Blood Pack in smuggling fertile krogan females through the CDEM, ran weapons shipments and schematics banned in Citadel space, extended low-interest lines of credit and aid packages to extremist human wildcat colonies, bankrolled groups like Terra Firma and Blue Stars No More as well as the Salarian terrorist organisation Remembrance, and God knows what else. Our financial analysts are fairly confident that the Unseen Cloud was aware of at least some of Saren and Benezia's investments on Noveria, and we have confirmed that the organisation's leadership has a cordial working relationship with Noveria Development Corporation Chief Executive Bel Anoleis. They are heavily invested Aria's efforts to trade with the Hegemony and in laundering the profits from her eezo mining. The more recent activities of the Unseen Cloud are perhaps more painful to read, since several have been directed against humanity and to our organisation in particular.

It was the Unseen Cloud that sniffed out your stellar efforts at Cord-Hislop Aerospace, sir, and the Unseen Cloud that pounced on your investments and stock transactions during Operation Benedict, freezing or seizing billions of credits worth of our organisation's assets (Benedict, by the way, couldn't have happened to more deserving people – that Williams freak was a disgrace to our nobility and I do so hope his niece or whatever catches a bullet). We've lost operatives and even entire cells and front companies to their activities…they have a rather sadistic habit of selling our people's location four times over to the Nightwind, STG, Deathwatch and the Broker, all at the same time, and then sitting back and enjoying the carnage.

Even today, the Unseen Cloud represents the greatest threat our financial analysts and investments face with the exception of the Broker himself. If not for Vigil's efforts it is extremely likely that they would have detected and attacked the intertwined mess of front companies and proxies used to fund and supply the Revenant Cell. Do not think that the Council or Spectres will intervene – half the Unseen Cloud's members sit on the Vol Court of Corporations, and they were the ultimate authors of the Citadel Unified Banking Act; they could shatter the galactic economy like a china doll if they chose to do so – and most Spectres that specialise in data mining and financial traps rely on them as a source for actionable intelligence and leads (Jondam Bau is their most high profile ally in this regard).

The simple fact is that the Unseen Cloud could almost certainly engineer the fiscal and political collapse of the Systems Alliance…and yet they have not done so. We do not know why this is. Petrovsky argues that such an action would put them at odds with the Asari Republic, who would be loath to lose such a valued client state (and to be fair the Unseen Cloud has suffered at the hands of the Thirty in the past)…but I'm still wary. We simply don't know enough about their ultimate plans for humanity at this point, and even your new Shepard ghoul isn't naïve enough to believe that kind of predatory alien influence is going to benefit us.

* * *

 **Goals**

Remember how I said that Volus see markets as an expression of existence itself? The sole purpose of any organism in such a system is to generate profit, the bounty of life, and thus any efforts to seek out profit, to maximise profit, and to aid those who would seek profit with you are just and good. So says the Book of Plenix. Now apply this overarching philosophy to their concept of a black operations group. The Unseen Cloud is a socio-cultural-economic warfare network, yes, but that is not its purpose. Its purpose is to maximise profit for the Vol Protectorate and ultimately for all Volus. Its goals are thus simple:

To ensure that the capacity of all Volus to seek the bounty of life is not compromised by anyone or anything.

To ensure core Vol Protectorate interests are not threatened by any alien activity, and to advance these interests whenever possible.

And finally, to aid those that who would aid Volus in seeking profit, and to hinder those that would hinder them.

Do these goals seem reasonable to you? They might, but go skim the file on Volus psychology before applying it the operational framework and objectives listed here, all the way to its logical conclusion, then get back to me. I'll wait. Done? Good. Almost every Volus alive takes their duty of care extremely seriously, whatever that duty may be, and they generally consider themselves to have a broader duty of care toward their clan and the Volus species as well as whatever combine they work for. They have a moral and intensely personal obligation to uphold these duties, and an almost spiritual one where the Book of Plenix is concerned. This duty of care is dependent on certain conditions being met: first, that the objective is to seek and acquire profit (either for a single Volus, all Volus, or anything in between); second, that one aids those that assist in the quest for profit; third, that one ruins those who thwart your efforts to seek profit; and finally that the other party reciprocates these duties. To NOT uphold these obligations is considered a staggering dereliction of duty by almost all Volus alive. It's as unthinkable to them as a human renouncing free will, an Asari turning her back on siari, or a Salarian refusing to seek further knowledge. ( _Addendum: this is partly why the Volus reacted as they did when the Turians recently broke client-state relations with them – it was such an overpowering rejection of everything Volus value, and even how they think and live, that the entire Vol Protectorate was literally in a state of shock – Tiffany_ ). Never forgot this: if Volus believe that the objective is worthy, and that the duty of care obligations applies, then _any_ action they take in the pursuit of the bounty of life is not just morally justified, but spiritually sanctified. This is why the Unseen Cloud exists, and this is why they do what they do, as you'll discover below.

 **Operations**

NESSUM/VAU: Named after two entirely different kinds of animals on Irune, NESSUM/VAU tasks are the basic economic vectors, social engineering and active measures that the Unseen Cloud use to either assault a hostile target (NESSUM) or defend a Volus interest (VAU). ( _Addendum: the biology of these creatures is actually of some professional interest to me. A Nessum is an apex predator found only in Irune's highest cloud-bank ecosystems, where it soars on the aerial currents, occasionally shrieking and dive-bombing out of the mist to catch its prey and bring the unfortunate thing alive back to its nest to feed to its young. Imagine a cross between a pterodactyl and a manta ray, but the size of a school bus. The Volus look at these creatures with a mix of awe and abject terror. The Vau, meanwhile, is a simple and sweet-natured herbivore that happens to produce some staggeringly lethal toxins as a defence against predators – due to the high-pressure ammonia-based nature of Irune's atmosphere these toxins are extremely hardy and I recommend we investigate them further for use as bioweapons against alien targets – Tiffany_ ). NESSUM/VAU operations are the most readily understood by an outside observer and would be familiar to any member of the SA Corporate Court, Noveria Development Corporation, and so on.

Typical NESSUM operations include hostile takeovers of alien companies and assets (via tender offers, proxy shareholders, or straight up bribes and blackmail); shorting alien bonds and futures; identity theft and fraud (used to either set up targets for blackmail prior to hostile takeover, or to compromise the targets reputation and damage the company); launching speculative currency attacks; exploiting galactic information-lag differentials for speculative long/short buys; coercing or cooperating alien news agencies and information brokerage services; disseminating misinformation to distort market perception; and employing any and all available legal means to otherwise attack the target and tie up their attention and resources. There is literally a battalion of Volus lawyers within the NESSUM Directorate who specialise in interspecies legal affairs and galactic commerce, and they've thrown down with corporations worth tens of billions of credits and left them begging for bankruptcy.

This Directorate is also responsible for offensive economic cyberwarfare. Vigil managed to recover an older version of a NESSUM Directorate hypermorphic VI-driven attack algorithm designed to sabotage HE3 markets in the Terminus Systems. It featured a staggering thirty five million lines of code – our people have no idea how the Unseen Cloud is able to manage the logic flow branches and decision tables in something that freakishly complex, but it was apparently deployed successfully and led to an annualised equivalent of 7.4% contraction in Terminus GDP for just over thirteen months…which in turn made Aria even more dependent on the Unseen Cloud's money laundering services. Goddamn Volus.

Typical VAU operations mostly revolve around including the most fearsome protective clauses you will see into literally every Volus contract that is ever written. Claw-backs (you give them money or other assets if you violate the contract in the slightest), poison pills (company assets and stock and whatnot change for the worse if you somehow manage to take over), people pills (where key Volus resign if you take over) golden parachutes (you pay those Volus a shitload of money when they leave), special voting rights (Volus shareholders are better than you), Vol executive oversight and veto clauses (they're watching you, all the time, with their creepy little bulbous beetle eyes), logic bombs (if X happens then you better do Y or you're gonna have to offer Z to them in compensation. Z is almost certainly going to be your proprietary technology or access to markets) and God knows what else. This is just the beginning. They'll play Pac-Man gambits – that's the human term, but it basically means attempting to take over the company that's trying to take you over, and Volus generally win those things. They'll carry out reactive smear campaigns and legal harassment of anyone targeting core Volus interests, individuals and companies, to the point where the target and their loved ones commit suicide. They'll start bankrolling your enemies. They'll suggest to everyone else that perhaps doing business with you would be most detrimental to one's income and physical health, and then follow through on those threats with whoever's left standing beside you – mostly with economic and travel sanctions enforced through CSEC. Doesn't sound like much, but you try living as a pariah in Citadel space who'll be imprisoned for possessing a single Citadel Credit or executed for travelling with the wrong permission chit.

Do not discount the effectiveness of their provocations or efforts to compromise a target – remember that Autarch from the Talid Family a few years back, the one who out of nowhere decided to consult with the Palavanus and immediately began trying to undermine the VDF's biotic program? Three months after he pulled that stunt, ultra high definition audio and video footage of him engaging in perverted sex acts ( _Addendum: by Turian standards at least. Chambers wouldn't even feel it - Tiffany_ ) with a handful of Turian prostitutes, who oh-so-conveniently turned out to be outcast separatists. The whole thing was leaked anonymously and broadcast throughout most of Turian Space. We later found out that the Autarch was drugged and that the VAU Directorate supplied the prostitutes via the Consort acting as a cut-out, but by then it was too late. The Autarch ended up committing ritual suicide to salvage the Family's honour, and the constant stress and harassment by the Hastatim caused his widowed mate to miscarry her final clutch of eggs.

PLENIX is the Directorate responsible for upholding the full faith and integrity of the Citadel Credit, and for defending it at all costs against any attacker or existential threat. Do you think that this sounds legitimate? Laudable, even? I'd suggest you pay closer attention to their charter but you can't – no one can, it's sealed and forbidden from being accessed by anyone but the nominated executives of each Citadel species. PLENIX has a written mandate from the Citadel Council, co-signed by each Citadel race's ambassadors and leadership (including the High Lords of Sol) and included as a secret addendum to the Unified Banking Act, instructing the PLENIX Directorate to carry out whatever actions are deemed necessary to safeguard the value of the Citadel Credit and to a lesser extent that of the galactic banking system. ( _Addendum: the Citadel Credit is a centralised floating crypto-currency based on a special drawing basket of member race currencies and value-adjusted to reflect the Citadel Council's monopoly on legitimate commerce and trade lanes, legitimate use of force, galactic law itself, and access to raw resources (eezo, HE3, and the like) – Tiffany_ ). This includes any violation of the Citadel Accords, the Charter of Sentient Rights, the Treaty of Farixen, and the Citadel Law on Weapons and Technologies of Mass Destruction and Civilizational Disruption. Yes, they're legally able to commit the sickest imaginable war crimes and atrocities without any consequence whatsoever.

The rulers of the galaxy reason that a catastrophic attack on the Credit and the galactic financial system could harm hundreds of billions of lives, leading to mass social instability or even collapse, and that against such a threat any and all countermeasures are not only morally justified but actively encouraged. This is the reason why CSEC treats people found guilty of Citadel bond fraud and credit counterfeiting with more ruthless brutality than they do rapists, or terrorists, or slavers – because whilst the latter are certainly disgusting they can only harm a few, and a few are nothing compared to billions. Members of the PLENIX Directorate take their professional duty of care even more seriously than normal Volus, and do not hesitate to employ whatever assets or tactics they believe are necessary – bioweapons, black nanonic techno-plagues, honeypots containing trapped rampant AIs, kinetic bombardment of a garden world, ghost-hacks, forced mind uploads, remote access blackbox implants, violating right-of-ownership of a sentient being's body – they've done it all. The PLENIX Directorate has access to the same pool of SPECTREs, STG Cells, Asari Commando Storms and Deathwatch that the Council itself has access to, and they've surely made use of them.

SPECIAL INVESTMENTS is theoretically the Special Investments Directorate of the High Corporate Court of the Vol Protectorate and on paper is an entirely separate organisation that doesn't answer to the Unseen Cloud or even acknowledge its existence. In reality, they ARE the Unseen Cloud, and serve as a useful front for their activities as well as for liaison with the more unsavoury elements of alien races (largely Deathwatch, though Unseen Cloud operatives under this cover persona have approached the Shadow Broker, P., and Aria in the past. The Special Investments Directorate is responsible for the administrative, analytical and other support measures for all other Unseen Cloud operations. In conjunction with the Volus Embassy, operatives working under this cover are also afforded diplomatic protection and are immune to persecution and most cursory investigations into their affairs. Combine that with the Unseen Cloud's superb skills at management, logistics, law, business and so on, and it turns out that most of their day-to-day operations aren't even illegal.

Special Investments isn't solely a cover – they really do carry out speculative investment and operational functions that are otherwise overlooked by other branches of the Vol High Court, or that other Volus aren't really suited to. The Volus Biotic Program and the Volus Defence Force were both originally developed and implemented by the Special Investments Directorate – and thus, by extension, the Unseen Cloud – and they're also responsible for speculative investments in alien space. The most recent of these include humanity's rapid expansion into children's haptic entertainment and programming in Asari, Turian and Salarian markets.

( _Addendum: Yes, technically this means that one of the most insidious and professional black operations groups in the entire galaxy also happens to own a 40% stake in Sesame Street. Big Bird is now a traitor to humanity. I'm beginning to understand why father's started drinking so much – Tiffany_ ).

* * *

 **Membership**

I had one of our newer operatives, who specialises in infiltration, adopt the persona of a human financier from Sirta looking for discrete sources of funding for some rather unsavoury 'research projects' that the High Lords and the SA in general really don't need to know about. The target was Barla Von Financial, a known associate and occasional business partner of the Volus Special Investments Division. No expense was spared and no measure considered superfluous: ID, clothes, physical appearance, accent, fake biometrics, pheromone and hormone dispenser pouches, even a spray on body-suit with some gene-genned hair and skin samples – all of these were considered and implemented. The tedious operational details are not relevant here. For the sake of clarity, suffice it to say that the operation was successful. ( _Addendum: I considered sending Brooks on the off chance that the Unseen Cloud's got a taste for the mentally ill and basic – Tiffany_ ).

As it turns out, Barla Von isn't technically a member of the Unseen Cloud, since he lacks ALL of the VDF treatment markers. I mean, _look_ at him. I could Krav that guy into a fine paste. Yet despite that he is aware of the Unseen Cloud, and they know about him, and they know that he knows about them, and he knows that they know that he knows about them too. Obviously he's tied to the Shadow Broker so they don't fully trust him, and vice versa, but business is business and neither party is going to lose out on profitable opportunities simply because everyone has their own agenda. He more of an associate, someone they make use of every now and then and who's a useful line of communication to have if they ever do require the Broker's services…and it says a lot that the Unseen Cloud and the Broker generally steer clear of each other, at least financially. Almost as if they respect each other. The operative mentioned that the Commissariat and AIS could be problematic, and was he perhaps capable of assisting with this?

He pretty much broke a filter laughing, before saying that "Those Earth-clan fools who pretend to be masters of their realm are in actuality the servants of market forces beyond their control and understanding, beyond all those who are brutish and not Volus. We will bury them".

Barla Von mentioned that it's only been in the last several decades that the Unseen Cloud has required all of its operatives to undergo the VDF bio-modification and conditioning process. It's fully detailed in the VDF file, but essentially it makes the Volus who survive it (which is the majority) far more assertive and functional in situations where a Volus would normally fall to pieces. They're harder, faster and heavily muscled with colder eyes and a deeper, rougher voice (quite a nice voice if you close your eyes and pretend it belongs to someone who is not a goddamn Volus). The VDF program is equally successful with male or female Volus, though the females are less muscular and deep-voiced ( _Addendum: the female Volus in the program appear to have roughly 12% improved biotic cool-down times and surge capacity compared to males. Fascinating and worthy of further investigation - Tiffany_ ). It doesn't make much of a difference in their usual milieu – they still swagger into a boardroom like an Ashland – but it does make them fully capable of experiencing violence or even undertaking combat and offensive actions. Barla Von suspected that the Vol Protectorate were doing this because they were interested in making the Unseen Cloud more of an offensive weapon, something capable of inflicting kinetic damage from unexpected and indefensible angles that could act as an effective long-term deterrent against alien aggression.

All members are selected from the most promising and aggressive Volus traders, business people, high finance types, combine executives, et cetera. They don't especially seem to care about the details of their prospective members' employment, only that they're exceptional, possess certain traits and have the physical and intellectual capacity to meet the program requirements. In the last decade or so they're also looking for certain bio-markers and gene-types that are typically used for selecting subjects for a wet-ware interface – it appears to be a direct neural link to a VI/Greybox framework that can be hot-swapped with programmable mods and storage units and then uplinked to Irune's galactic financial transaction network (and the supercomputer arrays required to run it). This cannot be being used for anything good for humanity.

By Volus standards they're quite tough, having undergone the VDF bio-modification and condition program, but any serious attacking force would take them down with few hassles…if it was one-on-one, and it will _never_ be one-on-one. Any member of the Unseen Cloud has access to the full financial and economic resources of the special investments division of the Vol Protectorate, and the Vol Protectorate control over a SIXTH of galactic GDP. They can buy whatever protection or skill they need. This Dessu Cal character had a half dozen Salarian techno-savants running ECCM sweeps or standing overwatch with some tricked-out Manur sniper rifles, and he was accompanied at all times by two VDF counterassault biotics with heavy repeater pistols and suit-mounted grenade/micro-missile launcher arrays.

If it's any consolation the Unseen Cloud only has a few members – three hundred or so core operatives plus support staff and auxiliary assets for a total headcount of roughly twelve hundred. Not that it matters when you run the galaxy like it's your own Monopoly board. Assume that they will be aware of any galactic initiative requiring major economic resources, and of course any Volus sponsored project.

* * *

 **Final Thoughts**

Do not make the same mistake that so many others have. Do not dismiss the Volus or the threat that the Unseen Cloud pose to us, to humanity. They are dangerous in the same way that the Discerning are dangerous, since they excel at exploiting opportunities that most people don't even see as important.

Cerberus requires a continuous flow of funding and resources in order to be effective, and this flow needs to be masked and scrubbed at every turn lest it be discovered and compromised. Without these funds and resources our entire organisation will be compromised and destroyed, which is why we devote so much time and effort to managing our assets.

We've had operatives and agents sacrifice their lives, knowing they face capture and torture, just to protect our operations. There is ALWAYS a paper trail, or a digital trail, and the hunters are always half a step behind us. I fear that idiot golem you have leading the Revenant Cell is too arrogant to bother trying to understand this. At least Miss Miranda should be able to keep that handled.

Likewise, the Unseen Cloud holds a Sword of Damocles over our entire species. They choose not to cut the thread, since they benefit from their dealings with humanity – and honestly, some SA undergrad majoring in whatever hysterical bullshit the Corporate Court claim to be economics is going to be eaten alive by your average Volus executive, so it's not like we pose a threat – but the damage would be just as real as any military invasion. See how loyal your military is when you can't pay them. See how effective your dreadnoughts are when you can't afford to replenish their torpedo stores or eezo core. See how united humanity is when faced with 50% unemployment, food shortages, sanctions, embargos and riots in every arcology. There would never be a clear enemy for people to direct their rage against – the Unseen Cloud is far too sophisticated and subtle to openly attribute anything to themselves – and it would all appear to be the result of 'market forces' or 'poor management and leadership by your arrogant ruling elites, earth-clan, they don't truly care about you'.

I recommend we maintain good relations with the Volus and persuade them that peace and commerce between our peoples is mutually beneficial, and that any other course of action would simply jeopardise the profits of all involved. Thankfully the Vol Protectorate is likely to be open to such an offer. We simply don't have the capacity to fully defend against such a threat when we spend so much time fighting off all the others, and both the SA and Cerberus tend to be preoccupied with more immediate problems.

This is depressing. I'm going to go dancing. Do call me if that operation to capture high-ranking enemy assets on Omega actually succeeds – there's plenty of reports left to write, and I haven't gotten to test my shock gauntlet's interrogation function yet.

Dr Tiffany Minsta


	7. Noveria Development Corporation

**A/N:** _Things have not progressed as well as I would have liked recently. As a stopgap measure (since it's not even 1PM and the weekend looks like it's already fucking ruined, lol) I am publishing Jacob's NDC document._ _  
_

 _The next chapter of TWCD is ... being worked on. Very slowly. No good ETA at this point except before the end of the month is unlikely. Now that I've predicted I won't have it out this month, I probably will._

 _Again, all credit to sub-co-author Jacob for this. I made minor adjustments for canon purposes._

* * *

 **The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **MESSAGE HEADER: BEGIN HELNET ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS…CLEAR**

 **HERA-ONE-SEVEN-FOUR: TIFFANY-174**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE…ACKNOWLEDGEMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: TIFFANY MINSTA**

* * *

Sir,

I'd like to begin by thanking you for inviting me to continue researching and writing these reports. It is a pleasure and an honour to contribute to the defence and glory of humanity.

I'm told, though, that some staffers and new recruits are offended by my 'bitchy fucking racism' and 'snobbish elitism'. Indeed, a great many personnel at several outlying facilities seem… aggressively confrontational about it. I am not, I admit, a people person when not around my own people – but then neither is Mr. Leng. And when someone is stupid enough to say that we need to be less of a 'racist bunch of assholes' to his face, it makes me question why.

I'm unsure if you have bothered listening to such things (I suspect you have better uses of your time) but I wish to touch on them because I'm concerned with the systemic weakness such things reveal. On the other hand, the fellow who said such a thing to Mr. Leng is no longer a concern, mostly due to lack of several critical body parts.

Like a head. Heart. Lungs. _And both legs_.

Ahem.

While I understand the necessity of moving the organization away from some of the more extreme positions we once held, I do not think I need commoners questioning the very basis of why Cerberus exists is a good thing. The facts are that alien governments and leaders cannot be trusted and aliens in general are going to help themselves first. Aliens are just that – alien. They are literally the Other and do not think, live or act as humans do. Survival is humanity's highest priority and extinction is not an option.

I would in fact argue that such intellectually weak reasoning is a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome and mental illness brought about by the trauma of the First Contact War and the current propaganda and provocations of alien species. The atrocities and crimes against humanity carried out by alien forces are a matter of historical record and cannot be denied. We do what is necessary to protect humanity from the predations of alien monsters who aided the Turians in their attempted genocide of our entire species, did nothing, or plan to subjugate us in the future. If you're not committed to our cause then you're part of the problem.

To the second complainant I say: I'll listen to your criticism of how I behave when your family has spent a billion credits on fixing the fuckups of our planet done by 'the common man'. I'll listen to it when you spend nineteen hours a stay studying at top flight colleges – on full merit scholarships, mine you – and gaining double degrees magna cum laude. I'll listen when the reasons for such bitching about my attitude have nothing to do with my work and everything to do with low-brow peasant jealousy and ignorance.

I'm fully aware, sir, that you are not of the noble families – Father says you came from the streets. I don't look down on you (or anyone else) for their _origins_. My own ancestors were hardly nobles to begin with. No, I look at how people live their lives. In your case, how you rose to your current position and skills, not to mention wealth, indicates that the only thing really stopping you from claiming such status is that, I suspect, you never wanted the attention that it would bring.

There's plenty of talent and skill in people who are not noble. But there is no value in treating people in equals until they actually show they are _equal_.

There is a vast gulf between being concerned about overreach on the part of Cerberus - which you already corrected - and the premise of the commoners who faithful lap up the lies of the Systems Alliance and are the first ones to support Cerberus when things are going bad, but as soon as jobs are plentiful and their ignorant offspring are busy screwing asari tell us we're 'evil'.

I have no time for such non-sense. I did not choose to be born into a noble family. I would not change if I were indeed not noble. My attitudes are because I am better by reason of intellect, drive, and achievement, not the name on my ID chips.

I apologize for the digression… but the investigation has put my nerves on edge. You'll see why shortly.

* * *

 **The Noveria Development Corporation (NDC)** is quite possibly the most ruthless, amoral and professional business concern in the galaxy – quite an impressive feat when you share that same galaxy with the Corporate Court of Ilium, the Vol Protectorate, the Systems Alliance Court of Corporations, and of course the private machinations of the Citadel race's ruling elites.

Most do not typically consider the NDC to be an 'Opposing Force' in the same sense as the Deathwatch, STG, _et al_ , and in a very narrow sense this is correct – Cerberus forces are unlikely to face NDC combat teams in a raid on Minuteman Station. Nor are they militarily a superpower – while they have interesting capabilities, their focus is elsewhere.

The events of the Benezia Incident, however, proved that the NDC's influence is far more extensive than most suspect, and that events on Noveria can and do affect what happens in the galaxy as a whole. We rarely experience _direct_ action with the Unseen Cloud, the Discerning, or Aria, after all, but that does not mean they aren't all dancing in the shadows with us.

Or behind us.

Thus, the NDC is certainly worth studying. Given their financial focus and my own training, I was the primary investigator.

After the well documented events of the Benezia Incident one might wonder just why the Citadel – or any member race of the Citadel Council – hasn't simply decided to storm Noveria and capture the planet for themselves. All of those corporations and their shadowy backers must be sitting pretty on a pile of secrets and credits, after all. The ugly truth is that any Citadel race _does_ have the military capacity to do so. Indeed, Noveria was more vulnerable prior to the Benezia Incident and the Systems Alliance had every chance to invade.

One questions why. Any invasion attempt now would inflict devastating losses on the attacking force, yet it remains a fact that the ability to do so is there. The intent is not.

The intent will _never_ be there. The Noveria Development Corporation has very carefully ensured that the Citadel, and by extension every single member race (regardless of their Council status), ultimately benefits in some way from the silken words and lucrative investments that flow forth from Noveria – and in recent years, has made sure to pay at least a bit more lip service to laws outside of Noverian space to avoid conflict.

Those silken words slip their way into any conversation discussing 'Noveria' and 'control or 'oversight' by anyone who matters, and you can be sure that those people who do matter (and their friends, families and business partners) are of course offered preferential stock options and sweetheart deals. The NDC would be delighted to be of service to you. Well of course we'd be happy to discuss any concerns you may have regarding our research permits – we take our obligation to galactic society very seriously and we're glad you help hold us to account – and, oh, would you like a drink? Our bartenders are the finest around, she'd be happy to make whatever you can dream up. Mm, yes, fresh from Ilium, that one. Perhaps you'd prefer your drink served in a private suite? I'd be happy to introduce you to her, it's no trouble at all, friend. This way.

You see how these things work.

They use the most beautiful lies to cover the most horrible truths. They corrupt or seduce, kill or cajole anyone who would oppose them. That Asari bartender isn't fresh from Ilium. Please. She's 400 years old, highly trained and experienced in mind-reads and alteration during deep melds, and thoroughly briefed on every possible detail on the target. ( _Addendum: if the Board of Directors is in an especially sick and vindictive mood they'll replace that 'bartender' operative with an Ardat-Rekshi, or even deliberately set up a match with a Nightwind operative at the behest of the Thirty. For a small fee, naturally - Tiffany_ ). The room is wired with more (and better) ultra-high definition video and audio feeds then ANN's own studios. They've got some deadeye ex-military Turian creep with a Krysae AMR watching the whole damn thing. They've had operatives grooming this mook for months, even years. If this doesn't work then there's another half dozen possible traps set up that target entirely different attack vectors.

Sexual, financial, familial, professional, personal – it doesn't matter. That poor fool now belongs to the Noveria Development Corporation.

It doesn't end there. Aside from privately held companies, any publicly listed stock on the Noveria Stock Exchange is freely traded throughout the galaxy (though Noverian stockholders and the Board of Directors have preferential buying and selling rights as well as so-called 'golden shares', which allocate preferential voting rights under certain circumstances. These are always going to the circumstances that matter).

What this means is that, technically, any citizen of any Citadel species can freely buy stock in Noverian corporations or Noveria itself and in doing so enjoy the full benefits and dividends of their investment. They then have an entirely rational self-interest in the continued existence and prosperity of the NDC. Every single Citadel government owns shares in the NDC or in Noverian-based corporations, and so do the vast majority of financial companies, banks, credit cooperatives, pension funds, and billions of individual investors. The NDC represent a significant single figure percentage of galactic GDP, enough that destroying the planet would almost certainly trigger a catastrophic financial crisis and long-term (20-50 year) recession across almost all of Citadel space.

Even if that was not deterrent enough, there is every indication that both the salarians and asari have very high level interests in Noveria – more on that later, but the upshot is the only reason Shepard was so successful in her one strike on Noveria was that the Citadel (and the Alliance) did not expect her to actually pull the trigger – and if she had, things might have transpired very differently indeed.

* * *

 **Origins and Current Status**

* * *

Like Ilium, places like Noveria have existed in one form or another for centuries. Most of the corporations and governmental proxies who operate on Noveria have of course done business before the NDC existed, and continue to do outside of Noveria. There have always been those would seek to carry out their business outside of mainstream society, even as they feed on that same society, and the basic incentives that encourage and reward this behaviour are not ever going to disappear.

Yet it is only in the last 30 years that the NDC arose and Noveria became what it is today. Some of this is due to the rise of the more powerful, and far more independent Court of Corporations on Illium, which in the past century has moved the planet from loose affiliation to nearly outright independence from the Asari Republic. Some companies did not like the business environment on Illium, or how deeply it was slanted only to certain parties – and the Thirty needed a business port for their own dealings not overrun by uppity clanless meddlers, no doubt.

The tedious details of the planet's physical nature are unimportant and available on the extranet. The main cities are still Port Hanshan (the capital city, housing the NDC Prime Tower as well as the primary corporate member body headquarters), Regulus (specialising in banking, commerce and specialist professional services), Daystani (specialising industrial research and high-tech manufacturing), Sertaci (formerly a private fortress retreat for the rich and powerful clanless Asari on Ilium, now open to anyone they choose to allow in who can front the money and connections – and now almost 80% rich and reclusive members of the Thirty, since most of the original clanless seem to have fallen down a flight of Justicars at some point).

( _Addendum: It physically pains me to admit that Port Hanshan has a simply fabulous dance hall that I cannot recommend more highly. They have an excellent selection of regular touring performances and even offer lessons in styles as diverse as human neo-classical, Asari flow-of-the-spilling-mountain-waters, Batarian force-posture (which is for males only but still), Turian all-gather, and even Elcor loa-dances of fertility and pound – Tiffany_ ).

Noveria is home to a nearly endless number of corporations (both public and private), combines, research initiatives, privately owned and operated business, independent merchants, front companies, law firms, shell and financial holdings, and assorted travellers – over twenty _thousand_ at last count.

A full listing is far beyond the scope of this report and wouldn't provide any actionable information at any rate; however, I have taken the liberty of listing a selection of unusual or influential firms that are likely to be of interest to Cerberus operations.

* * *

 **PRINCIPLE ACTORS**

* * *

Let us begin with Director Anoleis' own companies, or at least the ones he has a sizable stake in. Anoleis owns half of **Baria Frontiers** , the most successful start-up of the last twenty years and a company that specialises in stellar navigation charts, mapping systems, FLT plotter devices and exploration services. For the right person offering the right price, they're more than happy to sabotage navigational data and pilot instructions, make an expedition 'disappear' or sell particularly interesting discoveries to the highest bidder. We know for a fact that they've sold the locations of Reaper hull fragments to the Shadow Broker and the STG, and that they've provided trade routes of various shipping concerns (mostly, those who compete with the NDC) to Aria for decades.

Anoleis owns a third of **Haliat Armoury** , a specialised high-end turian founded weapons manufacturer who prefer to have their weapons tested against shipping routes by pirates they sponsor. They're currently bidding on defence contracts on human wildcat colonies and happily sell their weapons to Facinus separatists. Rumors suggest Haliat is going to be brought in on some of the construction of fleet-based weapons from the Thanix System the turians are working on.

Finally, we have **Apex Defence and Electronics**. Anoleis founded and owns the whole damn thing, and they specialise in ships sensors, ECCM equipment and certain grades of GARDIAN batteries (largely for frigates and below). Unlike the others, by Noverian standards Apex is relatively above-board but it's only a matter of time before they do something appalling. More importantly, Apex is the main provider of almost all the indoctrination detector and sensor packages used by the Citadel and C-SEC – a contract with literally billions of credits – and that means he has to be fully briefed on the Reaper Threat.

I find it… curious the Citadel chose him instead of a closely held asari or salarian outfit.

 **Nirvana Technologies** is a rather unusual outfit, initially founded by a human archaeologist and a strange exiled high-caste Batarian scholar who specialised in precursor species history. The company specialises in archaeological research, artefact digs, translation and esoteric physical and mathematical research. Most of their hires are experts in these fields and, unlike other Noverian inhabitants, are rarely seen mingling or engaging in Noverian life.

Twice a year, the company receives shipments and an envoy from the Batarian Empire. The envoy is clearly a member of the Imperial Blood, surrounded by Imperial Guard and carrying some kind of spherical device covered in blackish-blue cloth. ( _Addendum: given what we now know about the Batarian Emperor and his domain I strongly suggest we further investigate this company and all of its known associates – Tiffany_ ).

 **MarsGene** , as we all know, was founded by the brilliant Doctor Wilson, who now works for the Revenant Cell ( _Addendum: unless you've had that boorish cretin killed. I'll buy you a year's worth of Wild Turkey if you have, sir – Tiffany_ ). The company still operates without him; the public story is that he's deeply immersed in an exciting new research project, whilst privately he directs their efforts via cut-outs in a blind trust – as long as the patents and money keep rolling in most investors really don't give a shit. MarsGene is rather amoral, with a distressing taste for using flash clones as test subjects (entirely legal on Noveria, and it certainly explains why he used so many on the Revenant Project) and a tendency to see sentient beings as organisms rather than people. That said their products and services have saved tens of millions of lives and improved hundreds of millions of others – they've eliminated several human conditions (such as cystic fibrosis and lupus) and a number of early stage cancers.

Unbelievably, **Binary Helix** is still operating and is publically listed on the Noveria Stock Exchange! The Board of Directors ruled that the organisation as a whole was unaware of Saren and Benezia's more nefarious activities and that the company's employees could not be held responsible for their investors' actions. (That said, hundreds of Binary Helix employees were interrogated and dozens were executed by the Spectre Corps). They remain one of the finest genetic engineering and bioscience firms in the galaxy, and are just as unfettered and immoral as ever. I suppose after 'unknowingly' resurrecting a nightmare species hell-bent on genocide there's nothing else I can really list here that would add to their crimes.

 **Elanus Risk Control Services** is that rarest of things, a Turian galactic conglomerate that is completely open to foreign investment and operates independently of the Hierarchy. They have a reputation for providing extremely reliable full-spectrum risk control and security services in most galactic markets (they refuse to deal with outcasts and separatists, P. or the Terminus Systems) and are mostly made up of human and Turian troopers with Asari biotics and Salarian tech specialists. They provide most of the third-party contractor functions for the NDC that aren't handled by the NDF. Compared to groups like, say, the Blood Pack or CAT6, Elanus Risk Control is fairly tame – but keep in mind that as a Turian paramilitary organisation they take the same view of warfare and civilian causalities as the Hierarchy. Expect over-kill and a chilling lack of mercy.

Interestingly, the CEO of Elanus is an old Palavanus, one who lives in near total seclusion in a hardened bunker-palace in Sertaci.

The **Thax Enduring Lore-song Crush** has the distinction of being the only Krogan-owned corporation on Noveria (and one of only six in the galaxy). The name is at best an extremely awkward translation – the original Korogish roughly means "the melancholic keening of lore-song and life-struggle, led by the Shaman of Clan Thax" alongside the focused industry and leadership implied by the term "Crush".

Regardless, the organisation specialises in the collection, analysis and study of Krogan cultural artefacts and remains the foremost repository of spoken word and performance-based Lore-songs and Shamanistic rituals in the galaxy. Needless to say, such rigorous intellectual pursuits are not commonly associated with Krogan. The Thax Crush also serves as a trading post, offering a way for Krogan goods and services to circumvent the economic sanctions of the CDEM, and their primary exports are bespoke survival suits, bodyguards, and exotic weapons (largely Graal spike throwers and ultra-heavy shotguns).

The Thax Clan is currently in a blood-feud with elements of Clans Weyrloc and Gatatog after the latter two tried to aid the Blood Pack in seizing certain shipments destined for the Thax Crush. The contents of these shipments are currently unknown, though they originated from what used to be Rachni space.

 **Sirta Foundation** , the galaxy's premier medigel supplier and medical services corporation, maintains a research facility on Peak 9 and an extensive business operations hub and headquarters in Port Hanshan. They have an immense degree of power and are, along with the other companies listed here, one of the few corporations who can speak directly to the Board of Directors without having to make an appointment. Sirta is involved in an astonishing number of research programs and are utterly ruthless when dealing with any potential competitors (often contracting out non-buyout operations to the Unseen Cloud's NESSUM Directorate). They maintain a stranglehold on all medigel research, production and distribution and, as they're technically a not-for-profit 'charitable foundation', are afforded certain tax benefits in Citadel space that make competing with them even harder. Their corporate slogan is just spitting in the wound: Sirta – Here For You And Your Family, Always ( _Addendum: because all of our rivals are dead and you have nowhere else to go – Tiffany_ ). At least they're a human dominated concern, though those revolting Asari are slowly creeping their way in.

 **Lawson Technologies** maintains one of their largest research and development facilities in Port Hanshan, along with a headquarters that exists solely on paper and acts as a tax evasion scheme. The company is tied in heavily with the NOVENSILES project and much preliminary research and subject testing is carried out here on Noveria, thus providing the High Lords with a degree of cover and plausible deniability, an opportunity to spy on other NDC operations, and easier access to the Omega product markets. Clever. ( _Addendum: sir, I used to admire Henry Lawson's commitment to humanity, but after a number of shocking conversations with the lovely Miss Lawson I'm beginning to wonder why you haven't given him the full Benedict treatment – Tiffany_ ).

A human corporation and one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the galaxy, **Mimetic Entertainment** has an office and production facility on Noveria, carefully hidden behind various 'blind' trusts and proxy shareholders. Mimetic presents a wholesome face to the galaxy at large, so obviously they can't have their highly profitable pornographic studios exposed or shut down. I say 'pornographic' solely because that's how their products and services are classified under Noverian law – in actuality they produce a revolting variety of extreme content (I'm not describing it here – suffice to say if you were caught with any of it in human space you'd be burned alive by the Commissariat, and rightfully so), engage in sexual slavery and trafficking, and inter/intra-speceis prostitution.

On the other hand, they do also produce the Saturday morning cartoon line up for aliens.

The **Reach Research Compound** / **Aoegr Manufactory** has a sizable operational facility on Peaks 4 and 5. The entire venture is masterminded by Dalatrass Muvai Solus and Matriarch Thessial, so you can imagine where this is going. They cooperate very closely with Director Anoleis and, according to logs recovered by Vigil, Peaks 4 and 5 are assigned the second highest defence priority on the entire planet after the NDC Prime Tower itself. Critical work on the Alteration Framework, what we are presuming is some kind of trans-mortal initiative of the SIX, is carried out here. Uncountable subjects have entered and never returned, the facility goes completely dark several times a year, and any shipments or visitors to and from the facility are not subject to inspection or registration (unlike everyone else on the planet). Unconfirmed sources suggest that the facility's directors and security personnel met multiple times with the Collectors on a dead world at the edge of the Terminus Systems.

 **Elkoss Combine** maintains a registered combine and professional services firm in Port Hanshan as a joint venture with the **Special Investments Division of the Vol Protectorate** (read: the Unseen Cloud). They have a cordial working relationship with Director Anoleis and have a minority stake in his company, whilst he has a (non-voting) seat on the Elkoss/Unseen Cloud joint venture. The organisation is used mostly for VDF gene-mod research, speculative investments in alien firms, and the full spectrum of NESSUM/VAU operations (see the Unseen Cloud file for further details).

 **Armali Council** carries out legitimate bio-amp testing and research on behalf of its Thessia headquarters…and also acts as a proxy for the collection and processing of high-AY-index clanless Asari into Nightwind operatives, as well as illegal breeding of more AY-susceptible Asari. Technically such things aren't even illegal on Noveria. Regardless, the Justicar Order is completely oblivious and for obvious reasons the Thirty aren't going to put a halt to their own program. We suspect they act as a front and cover assignment for other black operations of the Thirty, and the Discerning are definitely involved with their Noverian operations.

Given the extreme wealth of the Armali Council, it should come as no real surprise that their facility, cut into mountain bedrock outside of Daystar, is even more heavily fortified than the NDC tower.

Naturally the **AIS** , **STG** and the **Shadow Broker** all maintain a clandestine presence on Noveria. The AIS is mostly occupied with defending the High Lord's work with Lawson Technologies. The STG is in the difficult position of being caught between following the STG Master's orders and the conflicting politics of the SIX. Due to Director Anoleis' influence, most (non-clone) STG operatives here are from the Manno and Solus families, both of whom are in a feud with families Ergii and Shuel. All SIX families are wary of the STG Master and are paranoid of being overthrown. What this means is that despite Director Anoleis' STG background, the STG is not actually in control on Noveria and cannot even operate openly there. Meanwhile, the Shadow Broker operates with his usual élan and subtlety; we do not have a full understanding of Broker operations on Noveria but current modelling suggests the Broker will attempt to subvert or acquire assets in NDC Internal Affairs and corporate Boards. ( _Addendum: we have only just started to investigate, but you should also assume that the **Hades Group** will eventually be interested in Noveria – Tiffany_ ).

Finally – and this is awkward – **Cerberus** (both pre and post Benedict) maintains a number of anonymously registered shell companies, holdings, and exotic financial instruments on Noveria, hidden beneath a bewildering array of cut-outs, proxies, laundered transactions, fake identities and so on. All communications are carried out by QEC or courier deliveries encrypted with one-time pads. None of our activities on Noveria are particularly nefarious – compared to everyone else on that Godforsaken planet we're downright cuddly – but rather the usual business operations our organisation uses to fund our various projects. ( _Addendum: like the Revenant Cell. That thing is a black hole that drains us of operatives, money and time. Your Shepard rage-chimp has no idea just how much effort is required behind the scenes to keep her functioning, does she? – Tiffany_ ).

* * *

 **Goals**

* * *

Compared to most of our adversaries, the goals of the Noveria Development Corporation are quite straightforward and easily explained. Ultimately the NDC acts entirely out of self-interest. They wish to retain their sovereign independence, such as it is, and do not want to be 'enslaved' (their words) by taxes and regulations and the oversight of the unworthy. (Or limitations of any kind, really). They wish to be the foremost centre of business and commerce in the galaxy, a planet where corporations and entrepreneurs have absolute freedom to make their own decisions and unleash their genius without having to deal with the limitations of people who are either too stupid or too fearful to understand them. They wish to dominate whatever markets they are active in, and then seek out new markets to dominate. They wish to provide maximum value for their stakeholders and investors.

Finally – and perhaps most ironically – in order to achieve these goals, the NDC puts an enormous amount of effort into ensuring that they have access to the Citadel species markets and that these markets are healthy enough to accommodate the NDC. Every parasite needs a host, after all, and it's in the parasite's best interests to ensure the host carries on living, blissfully ignorant of the fetid creature lapping up its blood.

* * *

 **Board of Directors**

* * *

The unique nature of the Noveria Development Corporation – especially compared to the alien black operations forces that are the usual subject of these files – means that it is the only privately owned and operated opponent we face. Whilst groups like the Unseen Cloud and the Discerning may seem similar, in the sense that they are 'civilian' agencies, ultimately those units serve the purposes of their respective species and governments. The NDC, however, operates entirely out of its own self-interest, and so an overview of their Board of Directors is critical to truly understand how the NDC functions and the threat that it poses. There are twelve seats on the Board of Directors; these are the twelve men and women who hold ultimate power and rule over Noveria like tyrants. Their word is literally law, and at best they tend to see themselves as benevolent despots entitled to rule by right of having achieved rulership in the first place.

An absurd tautology, I know, but by their reasoning if you're brilliant and defiled and dedicated enough to have achieved a Directorship in the NDC then frankly you've earned the right to do whatever you like and no one else is even qualified to question you.

 **Bel Anoleis** hardly needs an introduction. His ruthless professionalism, icy demeanour, and panache are legendary, and even amongst Salarians his ambition and amorality are striking. ( _Addendum: in fact, a Wheel Priest once remarked that Anoleis "sees the false and treacherous paths others take, and instead of calling out in guidance allows them to be entangled under the Wheel's great spokes, where he feeds on them like carrion". Anoleis laughed and had this engraved on a bronze plaque in his office – Tiffany_ ). His hair-trigger temper is also well known in every bar and rec room on Noveria, and that fellow whose brain he blew out during the Benezia Incident certainly wasn't the first. Anoleis is remarkably greedy, displaying not so much a reduced capacity to measure risk as he gets older but rather a disdain for the consequences, believing himself to be insulated from almost all of them. This is for the most part true, so perhaps one can hardly blame him for the hubris and avarice.

Despite popular opinion, Anoleis DOES possess a moral code – it's merely a very strange one. He believes that corruption, in the sense of unearned rents and protection rackets, is wrong, but that any income earned for any goods or services that were actually rendered is entirely acceptable. ( _Addendum: not that this stops him from bribing people. He merely has contempt for the people who accept his bribes – Tiffany_ ). Morality as we understand it is entirely separate from this code and from the transaction itself, and the usual Salarian utilitarian logic and extremely rapid emotional processing only accelerates this. He may engage in the most morally bankrupt and horrific contracts – like the Alteration Framework – but he will absolutely ensure that said contract is executed to the letter and that everyone involved was properly compensated for their efforts. Like most Salarian males he retains a touch of macho romanticism; he was moved by the sacrifices of those employees who refused to flee the Rachni assault on Port Hanshan and lavishly rewarded those who fought for him. Do not make the same mistake so many dead fools have and confuse this for sentimentality or weakness. Anoleis is ferocious and will not hesitate to crush any attempt to usurp his domain.

Despite his age, also do not make the mistake of thinking he is a helpless civilian. Anoleis personally executed well over three dozen asari cultists and two Geth Prime units in the battle of Port Hanshan.

An adoptee of House T'Rome, **Rulena Te'Rome** was the first clanless in several hundred years to have earned such an honour (along with Matriarch Lidanya) but the fact that she is still a matron (barely 400!) is considered even more impressive. Her adoption into the House diffused tensions with the clanless and is the primary reason why the House of Storms quietly vetos any Justicar actions against her. Rulena is fully complicit in the Armali Council's clandestine AY screening, breeding programs and all Nightwind activities on Noveria – largely because it was her who suggested all of these things. She bears the faint marks of one of the older and more ritualistic Dreaming Dancer cults; rumour was that she scores positively on the AY index herself but sources inform us that her sexual tastes are exclusively human female and Asari, and that she regularly indulges in forced melds and personality-submission linkage ( _Addendum: it's a difficult term to translate into English but essentially it involves an ongoing 'relationship' in which the Asari in question toys with the subject's personality and mental state mid-meld in order to force certain behaviours upon command. It is considered the vilest of crimes and a capital offense in Asari space – Tiffany_ ). Her business acumen is most impressive and she is the key architect of the Thirty's recent moves to corner and dominate the Ilium economy; we estimate that this will be irreversibly successful within the next 6 – 7 years. She clearly plans to operate on Ilium for the long haul, which is baffling considering the resistance of the clanless there to the Thirty. Perhaps in realization of this, she has rather cannily bought minority stakes in most of fellow Board members' corporations to ensure that they have an interest in her survival.

 **Matriarch Mara** of Clan Steelshape is the third highest ranking member of the eponymous Asari clan responsible for advanced manufacturing and high-tech research in Asari space. Asari are too often stereotyped as being mediocre scientists and researchers ( _Addendum: usually by the kind of ill-bred, bow-legged chimps who watch Westerlund News – Tiffany_ ), but I shouldn't have to remind readers that it is unbelievably stupid to underestimate a woman who's been working with optronics and mass effect fields since _before humans had discovered gunpowder_.

If you do have to reminded of this then I kindly invite you to eat a bullet – humanity will be stronger without you being present in the gene pool. Asari STEM-savants are some of the finest in the galaxy and are unmatched in their depth of experience – STEM-savant Matriarchs like Mara are terrifyingly intelligent and supremely focused. Matriarch Mara is often overshadowed by the brilliant Matriarch Thessial but make no mistake – she's a formidable figure in her own right and even discounting her position as a Noverian Board Member her power within Clan Steelshape cannot be ignored. She apprenticed under Matriarch Thessial and actually shares several dozen patents with her.

She's solely responsible for the business operations, investment decisions, and research and development scheduling for the entire Clan which is largely why she's on Noveria in the first place. The NDC offers an extraordinary degree of latitude to Clan Steelshape and their operations on the planet, partly because it's supremely lucrative for the NDC (and Director Anoleis personally) and partly because you really don't want to make an enemy of such people when you could just as easily make them an ally.

All we know of her work is that she's currently involved in several extremely speculative research projects (even for Asari…practical implementation of this technology is not expected to occur for another 200 years!), largely dealing with brief (1-5 real-time seconds) manipulation of temporal mechanics, zettawatt-grade void-based lasers, and localised gravitational singularity induction. Obviously all of these have potential military applications and we should monitor her every move closely.

The lone Turian member of the Board, **The Unbroken** is a sinister and mysterious figure. ( _Addendum: that glossy black, floor-length cartoon supervillian robe isn't helping on that score –and of course it has a hood trimmed in his ancestor's fused bone dust. Turian melodrama is fucking embarrassing – Tiffany_ ). According to Pel, The Unbroken's face paint represents the sacrifice of honour and an uncontaminated existence (or a 'life free of the pain and horrors that cloud the spirit', depending on the translation) in order to do the works one is ordered to by the Spirits. Needless to say, this is an extremely unusual outlook amongst Turians, one that is almost unheard of outside of the Valuuvian Priesthood texts and certain esoteric Spirit Shrines.

The Unbroken does not have any ties with Elanus Risk Control Services – the company you'd most expect a Turian Board Member to be involved with – and most of his business is providing legal and financial services for outcast and separatist movements in the Traverse, including the Facinus, as well as other ventures in the Terminus Systems. By all reports The Unbroken conducts himself professionally with a tendency toward dryly mocking irony and sarcasm ( _Addendum: if nothing else he has a stellar future ahead of him in the Turian Diplomatic Corps – Tiffany_ ), yet no one can confirm any details about the creature's past since all records are either missing or contradict each other.

There is a mad rumour that The Unbroken is actually Rolarn Quarn, thief and con-man extraordinaire, but that's impossible to verify and even P. doesn't possess some kind of phase-jump capability…though The Unbroken's sub-vocal harmonics DO match some recorded fragments of Quarn.

Then again, some of the sub-vocal's are also a match for P. himself. And running openly out of Noveria is almost crazy enough I could see that nutjob doing it.

 **Dessu Cal** represents the Special Investments Division of the Vol Protectorate, and is thus the Unseen Cloud's man on Noveria. ( _Addendum: in case those VDF modifications weren't a dead giveaway for a Volus in his position. The man has eyes like a starving sea monster, but then again he did crush an uppity mid-caste Batarian mercenary into a bloody paste with his servo-arm so he can't be all bad – Tiffany_ ). Dessu Cal hails from the infamous Cal Clan of Besso Secundus, one of the Volus' earliest colonies, and his clan-family still owns over 70% of the planet. From what we understand, the Unseen Cloud's Noveria operations are designed to provide the Vol Protectorate with a degree of socio-economic strategic depth, in that they'll have greater and more 'legally flexible' access to alien markets and corporations, and plausible deniability in that such operations can never reliably be traced back to the Vol Protectorate. Noveria is thus the Volus' primary conduit for access to the Terminus Systems markets, communicating with Aria and laundering Omega's blood money, circumventing trade embargos and sanctions, and making underground deals with parties who'd rather not operate in the open (like the Batarian Emperor or the High Lords of Sol). Dessu Cal is in command of all of these operations.

A direct strike is ill-advised without overwhelming tactical superiority – as I mentioned in the Unseen Cloud file, Dessu Cal travels with a bodyguard retinue of Volus counterassault biotics, Salarian snipers and technosavants, and a pair of disgraced former Remembrance Dancers.

 **Ortu Elkoss** is without doubt the third richest being in the entire galaxy, after Thana T'Armal and Muvai Solus. Officially his net worth is just north of forty billion credits, but his unofficial holdings are valued far more highly, although estimates are difficult to come by.

He is the current Chief Executive and lifetime Board Member of the eponymous Elkoss Combine, which his clan has run since its founding over a thousand years ago – he's the scion of possibly the most famous corporate dynasty in galactic history, and most Volus look up at him as cross between Prince Manswell and Admiral Ahern (which makes perfect sense given Volus psychology and culture. Don't laugh.). Forget what you know about most humans who inherit wealth. Amongst Volus it is considered proper and just to pass as much as one can to one's offspring, and for said offspring to do everything they can to maximise the profit from these opportunities. Elkoss is extraordinarily intelligent, focused and charismatic with a precise attention to detail and an alarming capacity for long term planning.

His investments and philanthropy have brought riches to tens of millions, and he's probably lifted a couple of billion sentient beings out of poverty, but you should never forget that the alien functions in an alien way with alien morals. What this creature can give he can just as easily take away. Case in point: during the last SA election, when those Terra Firma and Blue Stars No More goobers were screaming about how 'bloated greedy Volus is controlling all our monies, WAKE UP!', Elkoss did two things. First, he made a few cryptic comments on social media and the extranet about the essential vulnerability of human markets. This alone led to a 0.5% drop in SA GDP for six consecutive quarters (adjusted annually). Second, he secretly instructed the Unseen Cloud's NESSUM Directorate to target certain Terra Firma and BSNM financial backers and power brokers. The result? 40% of those targets are bankrupt, another 25% are now in prison, 15% committed suicide, and the remainder have travelled to Irune to beg for mercy. ( _Addendum: that said, if Chambers is even more hard up than she looks do let her know that Elkoss was just voted the most eligible bachelor on Irune – Tiffany_ ).

 **Eli Wikluh** is quite possibly one of the most infamous biotech traffickers and arms dealers in human space. Wikluh is the man responsible for acquiring live Batarian bio-symbiotes for the AIS (though he neglected to mention all the others he'd acquired and was selling on the side to the highest bidder) and in capturing certain aliens as test subjects and samples for both NOVENSILES and pre-Benedict Cerberus (including approximately one thousand Drell civilians to harvest for eidetic memory protein samples). He's bought and sold nerve agents, blood agents, black nano, nuclear materials, siege mines, stripped down ion bombards, flash-pak chemical explosives, and even a hijacked shipment of CAINs to literally anyone who'd buy them. He's on the omnitool of every warlord and crime boss in the Terminus Systems, and for a couple of years on the Citadel was rumoured to be the Shifter's regular thought-seek and drinking buddy…a connection that eventually led him to Noveria. He's been plying his trade here ever since. Oddly enough he's quite the family man, and has been happily married with five children for the last fifteen years.

Why exactly this lunatic neo-terrorist and criminal is on the Board is something no one seems brave enough to ask.

 **Xi Zhang** is a decorated former soldier of the Systems Alliance (having earned several combat decorations and made N3) whose family, a well-off but otherwise unremarkable group of shipping merchants, somehow offended a lesser cousin of House Chu and had to flee the Sol System (and effectively all SA space). An exceptionally fit and focused man in his very late forties, Zhang and several of his cousins had started a high-end security consulting and 'special services' company on the Citadel before moving to Noveria about ten years ago, where his star has risen ever since. It is Zhang's company that provides tactical advice and intelligence training to the NDF, and his men (and women) often act as bodyguards for VIPs or as enforcers and clean-up types for the Noverian elite.

Zhang was the leading advocate of a direct assault on the Commissariat Dreadnought during the Benezia Incident after he'd learned that Yonis Chu was aboard (though Zhang wasn't a Board member at the time), and apparently he despises the entire House to this day. Any AIS agents his people uncover are generally subjected to a harsh and humiliating interrogation before being drugged and shipped back to Earth with a snarky note addressed to Yonis. His promotion to the Board of Directors occurred about eighteen months ago and he is largely responsible for encouraging Director Anoleis to adopt a more aggressive force posture, although to be fair Anolais was already moving in that directly after the events of the Benezia Incident anyway.

 **Dalatrass Kirro** is the head of a fairly powerful family of venture capitalists and information brokers from the Silver Rim. She maintains good (if slightly distant) relations with the Solus family, who control her entire home-cluster, but of course she isn't stupid – she knows full well that if she gets too close to any one of the SIX then the rest will have the STG kill her and her entire family. She's done quite well for herself – proof of which is her ability to survive this long – and despite major setbacks (including the bankruptcy and death of several cousins and siblings) she controls both the largest information brokerage firm on Noveria and a minority (1-5%) stake in most major corporations on the planet. This puts her in a position of power…but not _too_ much power, which is exactly how she likes it. Better to quietly profit in the shadows and let some other braggart fool paint a target on his back.

Needless to say she's heavily invested in most counterintelligence operations by the NDC and tends to execute any enemy agents she captures, or occasionally selling them to researchers. Though very much a consummate professional, when relaxed her personal manner is quiet lively and gregarious for a Salarian. ( _Addendum: amusingly, she's been known to occasionally wear robes rather than a full bodysuit during breeding season (as is common courtesy amongst Salarians) solely to piss off Director Anoleis by filling the confined boardroom with the overpowering musk of mating pheromones. Director Anoleis finds this infuriating, but there's nothing he can do about it – to suggest to a Dalatrass that her musk is offensive and worth covering up is unspeakably rude in Salarian culture, so he just has to sit there and take it whilst he tries not to dry hump a 10 000 credit chair. The rest of the Board finds this whole biennial ritual to be absolutely hilarious, and so do I – Tiffany_ ).

The last three Board Seats are currently ' **Vacant'** due to the previous owners being killed during the Benezia Incident, but a current favourite is none other than your fellow tycoon and poker buddy **Henry Lawson**. Mr Lawson is without doubt one of the most famous human businessmen in the galaxy and his company, Lawson Technologies, is a leader in the fields of micro-manufacturing, omni-gel production and transponder programming, medium-to-personal robotics, and genetic studies. Officially he has a single daughter, though he's rumoured to have fathered dozens and is seen as something of a charming deviant by most social columns. In all, an impressive man who would seem to be very well suited to the Board of Directors. ( _Addendum: eyes only: Illusive Man: sir, I've cleaned up this brief paragraph but I feel I must be honest with you – Henry Lawson is an amoral monster who didn't hesitate to use DOZENS of own cloned children to acquire more power and influence. The man's a control freak, and also just a freak. As I mentioned earlier, after a serious of increasingly horrifying conversations with Miss Lawson I think it may be time for Mr Lawson to suffer a tragic heart attack for the good of humanity – Tiffany_ ).

* * *

 **Operations**

* * *

( _Addendum: due to the human origins and current Salarian ownership of the present-day NDC, most of their operations are named after a mad blend of influences from human and Salarian culture – Tiffany_ ).

MOMENTS OF SPRING: The name is based on a rather clever Salarian pun, where spring refers to both the traditional season of new growth and new plans as well as a slang term for the moment a bombastic young male comes up with a cunning scheme to win the attention of a potential breeding female (not a dalatrass herself of course – such delusional hubris would get the young male in question killed by her relatives). SPRING operations are offensive in nature and are typically active measures and counterintelligence ops directed at an external target in Citadel space or the territory of a Citadel member races – though in exceptional cases the target may be operating on Noveria. Much like the STG – and not surprising considering Director Anoleis' influence – SPRING operations tend to be very precise and carefully planned, with a high degree of technical expertise and dependent on many different pieces striking at once. For example, they prefer to compromise an enemy spy network, extract whatever operational data they can, and then execute all of them at once before the enemy can react; the AIS, on the other hand, would much rather subvert the network over time and turn it against its masters. It's a matter of approach.

NIRVANA/RAKSHASA: Refers to applying either positive incentives (NIRVANA) or negative incentives (RAKSHASA) to a current or potential client. Obviously a human reference. Note that 'client' in this case can refer to an individual, a group of people, multiple business entities, or even an entire conglomerate; regardless, the principles of NIRVANA/RAKSHASA operations remain the same.

Typical NIRVANA operations against individuals mostly revolve around plying the target with whatever rewards and pleasures they desire (and of course recording all of this for blackmail in case the target turns your offer down); please note that the NDC is not even slightly concerned with the perceived morality of the rewards and pleasures in general. It doesn't matter if the target is being paid with blood money from illegal organ harvesting, or making use of underage sex slaves, or being offered live test subjects. What matters to the NDC is that the target is acquired and becomes an asset. In the case of business entities, the NDC typically offers favourable trading terms, extra dividends, bonus cash payments for executives, joint research rights, or technical and security assistance. Naturally the NDC is the dominant partner in all of these activities, but for the vast majority of people this is still a very tempting offer. Most agree to whatever terms are offered, since the NDC is well known for being a generous friend and a ruthless enemy.

Typical RAKSHASA operations include hostile takeovers (either directly or through proxies), speculative attacks on a particular stock, bankrolling the target's enemies, poaching customers and employees, and deliberating running at a loss to undermine the target's contracts until they are bankrupt. So far this is merely the full range of aggressive options that would be familiar to any seasoned executive. But never forget that this is the NDC, and they do not hesitate to make use of blackmail (preferably through ultra-high definition audio-visual surveillance and comms interception), honey traps, anonymously distributing propaganda and disinformation to galactic news outlets and on the extranet, hacking (either to steal secrets, 'brick' the target's data, or plant incriminating evidence), corrupting law enforcement, renting protestors and hooligans, extortion and protection rackets, sabotage, psychological harassment, or even outright terrorism and assassination.

BOKKA NULL: A baffling Salarian pop-culture reference to the lead character of a classic noir-intellectual romance-crime drama that's apparently very popular with both STG types and, of all people, Turians (though the birds would never admit it). It is the codename given to the personal operations and programs of Director Anoleis, who seems to have a fondness for naming his pet projects after events and people from his old STG days. Most BOKKA NULL activities are closely related to Anoleis' work on the Alteration Framework and are subject to the fiercest and most paranoid security measures on all of Noveria. Recent activities include live cargo shipments from supposedly uninhabited worlds on the edge of Salarian space – one of which was festooned with UV laser decontamination units, acid tanks, and HEPA filters – as well as an esoteric series of hyper-luminal genome modification simulations that are (ingeniously) piggy-backed onto the main Noverian computer network and disguised as ordinary housekeeping runtimes. The strangest part of this is that the genome in question isn't Salarian. It's human.

* * *

 **Membership**

* * *

Much like the history of Noveria, most of the NDC membership records are tedious and irrelevant. If you're that keen to bore yourself to death searching through twelve and a half million meta-files containing application forms, personnel profiles, meeting minutes and database records, then please feel free. Technically speaking, any employee or subcontractor of any incorporated entity operating on Noveria is considered a 'member' and is required to submit their personnel records (including DNA records as well as tissue samples and full scans of any unique identifying features). All employees are subject to a whole-of-life background check (limited to 100 years for Asari, at least at this level), psychological testing, and a gruelling pre-induction interview by former military interrogators and retired CSEC detectives. Every single claim and statement the potential employee makes must be recorded both digitally and in writing and is triple-checked by the NDC's data-trawling and cyber-operations unit.

Any lie or omission is considered grounds for termination. Keep in mind that on Noveria 'termination' is quite literally that – a bullet to the back of the head or, if the Board would like to make an example of the offender, termination via expose to Noverian weather. ( _Addendum: approximately six months ago, the NDC Board of Directors voted to begin a geo-engineering project designed to increase the already impressive lethality of the planet's weather – Tiffany)._ Naturally ever possible legal cover or defensive mechanism is included in the employee contracts, which isn't particularly difficult when the NDC is the absolute sovereign and decides what the law is in the first place. Any form of disclosure or theft of NDC and/or NDC associate assets is punishable by termination. Any independent activity that undermines the goals and operations of the NDC is punishable by termination. Any hostility toward the NDC is punishable by termination. Failure to carry out your duties to the best of your ability is punishable by termination. Each of these termination-level offenses is considered a Major Contract Violation. Minor Contract Violations are punishable by less extreme measures, including fines, salary clawbacks, asset seizures, exile, blacklisting, lawsuits, or simply investigation and mediation.

Control measures and performance incentives only get stricter and more paranoid from there. There are a total of 15 Operational Ranks in the NDC, and each rank carries with it certain duties and control measures depending on the project and the role of the employee. The highest rank – that held by the Board of Directors – actually enjoys the most freedoms and least oppression. Some employees may be fitted with VI-monitored cortex bombs, containing a small hi-explosive charge or a few atoms of anti-matter, that detonate upon intrusion into unauthorised areas or dataspheres, when leaving the planet without permission, or when certain other conditions are met. There are also species-specific control mechanisms. Extremely valuable Elcor employees are frequently subject to pheromone dispersal systems designed to influence their behaviour, Turians may work under sub-sonic harmonic vibrators, Asari may need to swear Oaths of service and secrecy or undergo regular surface-links, and so on. In extreme cases the employee is monitored 24/7 by a 'personal assistant' drone, implanted cyberware or a one-way Graybox feed connected to the VI security array.

One might ask at this point just why prospective employees put themselves through such an ordeal, one where even if you are successful your life itself is temporarily rented out to what is effectively a corporate stellar dominion. The answer should be obvious: the Noveria Development Corporation offers its employees some of the most staggeringly opulent rewards and incentives available anywhere. Not all of these are available to lowering Ranking employees, of course, but the _promise_ of attaining them is always there, and that is enough to motivate.

The average Rank 1 – 5 NDC employee earns a salary package worth _forty seven times_ more than that of the average Class II SA citizen. For Rank 6 – 10 employees, this figure is three hundred and thirteen times larger, and for Rank 11 – 15 it is typically seven hundred and seventy five times larger. Depending on the incorporated entity, employees may have access to preferential stock options, heavily discounted financing, and full joint ownership of any patents. Naturally they have the full backing of whichever corporation or combine they work for. Contract law as well as private and intellectual property rights are fiercely protected (ironic, considering the shocking amount of corporate espionage carried out either on Noveria or by its inhabitants), and you'll certainly have no problem dealing with the common trash who would envy and murder you simply for being superior ( _Addendum: most refreshing – Tiffany)_. It isn't just about money, of course. The NDC is clever enough and subtle enough to realise this and offer equally attractive incentives targeting separate areas of their employee's lives. Do you have a family? Your spouse will live just as well as you, your children will receive the finest education you could wish for, and your immediate relatives will have access to cutting-edge medical care before it even hits the market. There to see and be seen? You'll enjoy a position of great power and privilege, mixing with the cream of galactic society at the most exclusive parties. Religious? Port Hanshan offers dedicated human prayer services, full size Elcor meditation groves, Palavanus-curated Spirit Shrines, a host of Wheel Priests and Athamists, Batarian Pillar-Lakes, whatever you care to believe in. Fan of the arts? No troupe, band, painter, haptic performer, comedian, dancer or writer is beyond the reach of the NDC. You'll see, experience, or perhaps even own them. Career focused? You'll be working with some of the finest minds your species has to offer in research labs that are surpassed only by those of Clan Steelshape, the Reach Research Compound, and perhaps the Revenant Cell.

This is merely the beginning. Favoured employees have access to every imaginable luxury, no matter how trivial or decadent. They live in palatial private quarters fit for a Citadel Councillor or a High Lord, attended day and night by exquisitely trained servants. Gourmet meals, made for both dextro and levo visitors and using only the freshest ingredients delivered daily by FTL courier, are served with a smile by the finest chefs in the galaxy. You will have unlimited access to every vice you desire. Red sand and Hallex, chemically purified and snorted off the joygirl who delivers it. Human heroin, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, dimethyltryptamine and cocaine. Every alcoholic beverage in the known galaxy – vintage, origin and price is no object. The full spectrum of euphoric, depressant and psychoactive saps from Sur'Kesh. Hallucinogenic Drell skin gland concentrates. Hormonal doping. Biological symbiote organisms, temporarily attached to the host for a week and guiding them through a grandiose haze of euphoria (or lust, or blood-rage, et cetera). Whatever the hell Elcor Lifemasters are on.

An endless supply of whatever men, women, aliens, objects or experiences bring you to orgasm. Would sir like his humans from Earth or one of the colonies, or perhaps from one of their intra-racial groups? Baffling, I know, but it seems to matter to the humans. Ah, Turian, a fine choice, we can apply whatever paint and plate markings you like and the pregnancy pheromone injections are activated upon passing through your door. Please, simply enter your preferences into our haptic catalogue for next time. It is for the lesser beings of the galaxy to concern themselves with morality and other such triteness. Yours is to rule and to enjoy ruling.

There are far darker pleasures on Noveria that are enjoyed more discretely, away from prying outsiders. The slave stables, where those favoured by the masters of Noveria may pick whomever they like to subject to whatever they want (quite popular with Human and Batarian males, as well as sadists of all races). The gladiator arenas disguised as warehouses or power stations, where sentient beings are forced to fight alien beasts or other combatants for the amusement of those watching (a great favourite with Krogan and also Volus spectators who can't help but run betting pools). The still-living leftovers and escapees of various hotlabs, hunted for sport (mostly catering to Turian hunting parties). The clone banks, thousands upon thousands of clear reinforced glass tubes holding the growing organs (and foetuses and eggs and faces) destined for underground surgeries and dining tables. Cyberware labs and specialist doctors so extreme even the STG won't deal with them. It doesn't end; every sentient being in the galaxy, human or alien, is driven by their own existence and instincts to seek out certain needs and desires, all of which can be accommodated or researched or traded on Noveria for the right seller, the right buyer, and the right price.

* * *

 **Combat Tactics and Equipment**

* * *

There are two primary combat branches of the Noveria Development Corporation. These are the Noverian Fleet, responsible for all atmospheric, space-based and planetary/system defence operations, and the Noverian Defence Force, responsible for all ground-based security and defence operations. Both of these forces have changed immensely since the Benezia Incident.

For a start, the current Captain of the Noverian Fleet is no longer Zerzo Hallas. That fool got himself fired, or exiled, or just shot after the Board of Directors reviewed his conduct during the Benezia Incident. No one can confirm exactly what happened to him. ( _Addendum: He's a Drell. Who gives a shit? – Tiffany_ ). It is in any case irrelevant, since the good Captain's replacement is far more problematic. Grigori Zakharov, the new Fleet Captain of the Noveria Development Corporation, is a former Corsair commodore whose actions were considered extreme enough to disgrace himself and be hounded out of even that controversial program. It was Commodore Zakharov whose Corsair unit defeated a Batarian pirate incursion, captured the lead vessel's navigational data, and then tracked the fleeing vessels back to their base of operations…his men then slaughtered the pirates, torturing to death any who surrendered, before gang raping whatever Batarian females they could find. Commissariat sources suggest that they kept several of these Batarian females on their ship as pets, arguing that that they weren't really sentient and so could not be considered slaves under Citadel law. Zakharov fled to Noveria to escape trial and summary execution at the hands of the Commissariat, and despite his revolting character is an accomplished naval operator and tactician who's quite popular with the men (and women!) under his command and something of a hit with the Board of Directors.

Fleet Captain Zakharov commands a far more formidable force than the one that humanity encountered during the Benezia incident. The backbone of the new Noverian Fleet is a dozen Salarian Assault Cruisers supported by four dozen Salarian Corvettes, with four Corvettes generally escorting each Assault Cruiser, and each design has been carefully modified and optimised to suit Noverian operational requirements. They don't employ dreadnaughts, partly because it would bring far too much unwanted attention from the Citadel, and partly because they see such vessels as an inefficient use of resources that could better be spent on the orbital platforms and asteroid-mounted mass drivers. The vessels are not designed for expeditionary usage, power projection or long deployments – yet another reason the Citadel doesn't really consider Noveria to be a threat – but in return they are able to over-engineer the weapons, sensor, and ECCM loadouts using the newly available space and resources. I consulted with General Petrovsky on this subject, and he said that such a fleet "sacrifices deployment endurance and combat mass in exchange for a frightening capacity to rapidly inflict damage and outmanoeuvre any attacker, forcing the survivors to be exposed to either crippling broadsides or the fearsome teeth of the Noverian space defence platforms". ( _Addendum: thanks for that, GI-Joeski – Tiffany_ ).

It is essentially a naval flotilla designed to out-gun, out-hack, and out-manoeuvre any hostile in-system force and destroy it utterly, yet at the same time present no threat to any Citadel power.

Very clever.

On top of this are another roughly fifty new orbital defence platforms that serve as docks, fighter carriers, missile bases, particle cannon platforms, ECCM hubs, and general fortresses. The NDC is also slowly bringing small asteroids into their moon's orbit and fitting them with 5km mass drivers (they're leasing the design schematics from Aria for a small fortune). They hope to have four to six such asteroids operational within the next eighteen months.

The ground-based Noverian Defence Force remains under the command of the newly promoted Colonel Arctus Vurthex ( _Addendum: 'Colonel' is an awkward best-fit human translation. According to Pel, the correct term would be 'third claw of the disembowelling leap' and that 'for a fancy high-born motherfucker' I know 'dick-all' about 'Turian shit'. One day I'm going to have that man shot into the sun if he keeps pulling his disingenuous thug act with me – Tiffany_ ).

Vurthex, as I'll call him from here, is not the usual hoo-ha former Deathwatch sociopath that most idiots expect to running such an operation; he's spent over fifty years in the Hierarchy as a logistics and operational security officer for the (relatively upstanding) Blackwatch, and according to Pel no one has a bad word say about him. He left solely because the NDC offered a blank cheque to treat his children's rare medical disorders, and he has a standing offer from the Hierarchy to return without the need for the usual Trials.

For a Turian he's surprisingly thoughtful and subtle, and of course deeply loyal to his superiors. He did not break or run at any point during the Benezia Incident, having held the tower against staggering odds, and personally executed every NDF deserter before apologising to the Board of Directors and offering to strike the paint from his own face to salvage his honour. They were most impressed by his bravery and loyalty and promoted him on the spot. He treats all of his troops well, providing they've served well, and has a fine working relationship with Major Matsuo.

Vurthex's reforms are already shaping the NDF into a serious paramilitary organisation capable of successfully engaging all but the standing military/intelligence units of the Citadel races, the Geth, the Broker, Batarian elites, Aria, and perhaps Cerberus. The NDF now has access to former Hierarchy leadership cadres, Serrice Guard instructors, human tacticians and retired AIS spooks, disgraced Drell biotic savants, Quarian engineering and infowar teachers, and of course Director Anoleis' motley crew of former STG. They are supremely well funded, equipped with cutting edge weapons and accessories, and train together on a daily basis; Vurthex is particularly emphasising unit cohesion, esprit de corps, combined arms operations, and info-centric urban warfare. NDF combat teams are typically made up of twelve personnel: one unit leader, two scout/snipers, three CQB specialists, three tech specialists/combat engineers, and three regular troopers. All are trained in combat medicine, communications, xenopsychology, and counter-infiltration.

As you can see, such a force is designed specifically to contain and neutralise any hostile force within Noverian facilities and to repel any landing or invasion attempts. It is not designed for expeditionary actions or theatre-scale warfare. The NDF also now has a dedicated mountaineering and extreme weather special operations detachment made up of former STG personnel ( _Addendum: and of course it's the oldest, craziest Solus types who volunteered for this. Noveria's weather is the sole reason why it's considered a death world by most stellar cartographers. Something is dreadfully wrong with that entire family. Then again, their motto is 'You can only die once' – Tiffany_ ).

Finally, a few words are needed here on the subject of the Noverian security network and cyber systems. Nanite monitoring devices are extremely common and form the backbone of the Noverian basic automated security net, along with full body and cargo scans, automated patrol mechs and drones, ultra-high definition video and audio feeds, bio monitors, biotic tracking and suppression devices, and of course Internal Affairs' own counterintelligence operatives. All communications, both within Noveria and all incoming/outgoing traffic, is stored for six months and monitored in real time by an AI-VI hyperluminal computational array based in Port Hanshan; this array is physically separate from the primary NDC cyber systems and datasphere. The NDC has just signed a contract with Admiral Daro'Xen of the Quarian Migrant Fleet Research Flotilla to provide ongoing technical advice to further improve the NDC's cyberspace and electronic countermeasure capabilities.

This is already paying dividends, and the innovative new NDC cyberbanks and datasphere use a 'coil' systems architecture as opposed to a traditional 'web'-like network (like the extranet, for instance). The datasphere is segregated into a cascading series of independent subsystems that are physically independent in real space and communicate solely by hardened optronic shunts. Access to a lower level requires both physical authorisations as well as passing through the intrusion counter-measure electronics, patrol runtimes, hunter-killer daemons and redboxes embedded in the previous level. Whilst a sufficiently advanced enemy could in theory overwhelm the Noverian datasphere, remember that the NDC physically controls all FTL communications and bandwidth within the solar system and can open or throttle these lanes at their leisure.

Any attacker who breaks in would be trapped. Only a full scale Geth fleet, the Collectors, and Vigil would be able to successfully engage in such an instance without being physically present in the planet's orbit. The primary 'coil' system layers are as follows: interrogative IFF/preliminary firewall and patrol runtimes housekeeping datasphere ICE1/H-K DAEMONS Rank 1 – 5 Access ICE2/H-K DAEMONS Rank 6 – 10 Access ICE3/H-K DAEMONS REDBOX Rank 11 – 15 ICE4 /H-K DAEMONS sensor and financial communications net REDBOX PHYSICAL SYSTEM CORE/ROOT ACCESS.

* * *

 **Final Thoughts**

* * *

I do hope that anyone who didn't think that the NDC could pose a threat to us, or laughed at the idea of them somehow being considered an opposing force, can kindly shut up.

We are resigned and desensitised to self-interest as a motive, let alone as a _raison d'état_. Almost everyone in the galaxy engages in some kind of business, probably works for one, and certainly has to live with the decisions that businesses make. The Noveria Development Corporation is dangerous precisely because people see it as ordinary. Much like you, sir, they delight in being underestimated, and are utterly ruthless in dealing with anything and anyone they see as a threat. The NDC has every possible reason to fight for their own survival, and the best way to ensure that they live on and prosper is by making sure that everyone that could possibly threaten them has a stake in their operations. Mutually beneficial arrangements win a lot of powerful friends, and only a fool thinks that a man with a briefcase is less dangerous than a man with a gun.

Oddly enough, the best way to defend against the NDC is by ensuring that they have a stake in our survival too. Ensure that any operations against Cerberus personnel and assets consistently result in pain and losses with no tangible benefits. Kill their counterintelligence teams, flip and mislead their moles, sabotage their clandestine shipping lanes and cash flow; deny them any kind of return on investment when they seek to engage us. Then show them that a positive – or at least neutral – relationship with the Dog brings with it all kinds of rewards, and that money is just the beginning. I would recommend eventually bringing the NDC in for a minority stake in the front company manufacturing and distributing our next run of utility and security mechs; a 10-20% non-voting stake should be enough to whet their appetite and give the NDC an incentive to aid or at least cover our front operations on the planet. It would also make funding the Revenant Cell easier.

Dr Tiffany Minsta

* * *

 _P.S. I still haven't gotten to test out my neural shock gauntlet on any alien subjects, and now I'm out of icewine. Urgh._


	8. Batarian Special Intervention Unit

**A/N:** _To cap out the recent updates to the Cerberus Files on batarians before the OOC post, Jacob did a writeup of the Special Intervention Unit._

 _Given that batarians are pretty bad even in what you've already seen, an additional warning: this is a lot worse. Serious._

 _All credit to sub-co-author Jacob for this, and to the mini-Editing Gang who worked on it as well._

* * *

 **The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **MESSAGE HEADER: BEGIN HELNET ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS…CLEAR**

 **HERA-ONE-SEVEN-FOUR: TIFFANY-174**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE…ACKNOWLEDGEMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: TIFFANY MINSTA**

* * *

Sir,

I knew it was only a matter of time until I had to write this.

Much has transpired since the collapse of the Batarian Hegemony, but some things never change. I don't know who the hell is responsible for the general impression that the SIU is somehow more 'honourable' or 'principled' in their conduct when compared to other batarian forces, but I can assure you that this person was either deluding themselves, trolling, or possessed a genuinely evil sense of humour (we cannot discount that it could be the batarians themselves spreading this lie).

Even most Systems Alliance combatants only ever encounter SIU operators on INTERVENTION missions (detailed later on) which by definition are clean-cut, or as least as clean-cut as deniable black operations can be when executed by sadistic monsters. Regardless, INTERVENTION operations are only a partial selection of SIU mission sets, and they tend to either operate without identifying markers or use a variety of cutouts and proxies for their more revolting operations. Yet the myth persists, and people who really should know better – such as Systems Alliance NCOs and even goddamned flag officers – still think of the SIU as professionals. Cruel and ruthless killers, but professional nonetheless. I don't know what I can say to make these people see reality, short of either publishing this file or the SIU's own archives, and we all know the squints are never going to open those up to anyone, ever, for any reason.

Some idiot researcher tried once. He – a graduate of New Griffith, because of course he was – actually wrote a pen-and-paper letter to the SIU asking them to open their archives on Khar'shan to him out of, and I quote, "a universal appeal to the scholarly pursuit of knowledge, democratic transparency, and brotherly love."

It took SIU xenopsychologists and linguistic experts weeks to fully grasp and translate these concepts, but one comms intercept overheard them describing it as 'the funniest thing my four eyes have ever witnessed.' After passing the translated letter around to the entire SIU they invited this guy and his fiancé on an all-expenses paid trip to Khar'shan, which that colossal fuckwit actually accepted until the AIS intervened and stopped him. You might be able to imagine what fate awaited them, but he clearly couldn't. _(Addendum: and that is the final say on why commoners should never be allowed to study humanities at fourth-rate universities funded by public grants. What's that you say? Something about nobles having more opportunities? Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my family rebuilding the Earth you fucked up. Love our chats! – Tiffany)_

The Special Intervention Unit, colloquially known as 'the Unit' to its members, is professional in the same way that each of these opposing forces is professional: this is all they do, they're extraordinarily good at it, and without exception their motives, activities, and continued existence are an unforgivable crime against all life.

I suppose that this total misconception of the SIU in popular culture is really a triumph of information warfare and an excellent example of what SIU mind conquest specialists (you'll meet them later) call 'that which through cunning and misdirection distracts the eyes to submit the thoughts.' This perception isn't just some harmless cultural detail. It has extremely serious consequences. Remember how one of Petrovsky's dumbass troopers dismissed me as a 'hateful racist asshole' when I argued that they shouldn't buy bootleg batarian music, regardless of how well performed and catchy it is? How illegal human consumption of batarian music is actually their ninth largest export by revenue, worth billions of credits per year?

Yeah, it's because the SIU controls those smuggling lanes and data channels, so every single track you buy from some creep in the entertainment district is directly supporting not only organised crime but literal crimes against humanity. You're also, without doubt, getting your omni-tool infiltrated by SIU trojans and spyware in the process. _(Addendum: I don't want to say I told you so, but I did tell you so. I don't care how you think 'Khar'shan Ministry of Sound' or 'Noise Hegemony' is 'fuckin' awesome, bro' – you buy their music, you're bankrolling slavery, rape, and torture. God, I hope that trooper gets wrecked by Tetrimus or whoever on Ilium. Now that I've said that he'll probably survive. I'll have to kill him myself – Tiffany)_

Read on if you'd like to enlighten yourself as to what the Unit is truly like.

* * *

 **Origins and Post-Hegemonic Status**

The SIU enjoys a rather unique distinction amongst alien black operations forces in that it arose organically; it was never officially planned or founded and instead evolved over time. There was always a need for a highly skilled and disciplined force capable of providing rapid response and crisis management to problematic situations, such as slave revolts, general insurrections, enemy spies, raiding parties, people displeasing the Hegemon, and people displeasing the Emperor. Eventually these units were consolidated as batarian society became more unified and expanded, first across Khar'shan and then across the galaxy. I say 'unified,' but that implies some kind of consensual rule. Nothing in batarian society is consensual. They don't even have a word for it, since it implies equality and respect that hasn't been earned yet. The closest equivalent they have is a word that roughly means 'mutually beneficial transaction between males of equal caste and social status.' But this is merely the beginning of a strange story, one that I cannot help but feel is critical to understand in order to truly grasp what batarians are and what has happened to them.

I will concede that the historical SIU was at least more restrained and less prone to capricious evil than it is today, but like so much of the old batarian culture, this too has become warped and corrupted over time. The most curious aspect of this civilisational decline is that it appears to be a schizophrenic blend of organic devolution and deliberate planning and activity. Our research corps does not fully understand this phenomenon, which is hardly surprising given how difficult it is to study and observe, but we have drawn certain inferences based on key pieces of evidence.

As the Batarian Cerberus Files discussed, batarian society, culture, and even their physical evolution and environment have both decayed of their own accord in a plausible scientific manner and also experienced rapid changes and outright alterations that are simply not possible without some form of outside interference. Initially this was baffling, but thanks to Miss Goto we now know that the batarian elite encountered some kind of partially destroyed Reaper platform in the Traverse, which they recovered and brought back to Khar'shan. Prolonged exposure to such an abominable construct would absolutely account for the decline of batarian civilisation and the barbaric changes we've seen since.

The primary drawback of this theory is that it does not account for the sheer timescale – the Leviathan of Dis wasn't recovered until humans were on the galactic scene, and this influence on the batarians appears to date back several hundred years, or even thousands. Our current hypothesis is that the batarians were also exposed to similar Reaper artefacts in the past, possibly connected to the Pillars of Strength surrounding the Lake of Black. In terms of this document, what our theory means is that the evolution and current state of batarian civilisation as a whole is reflected in the SIU, and you can quite easily see these changes over the course of history to the present day. There was even a time when the SIU precursor enjoyed a degree of independent civilian oversight! This oversight was provided by a single bureaucrat in a nonexistent ministry who reported to no one, true, but for batarians even paying lip service to a façade is a remarkable achievement in civic governance. Cherish its memory.

Regardless, the chaos and readjustments brought about by the collapse of the Hegemony has certainly impacted the Unit. For a start, they now answer directly to the Emperor himself, whereas previously they answered to the Hegemon's High Masters of the Fell Mace (roughly equivalent to the SA's Joint Service Chiefs of Staff). This in turn has shaped the Unit's priorities, if not their goals, since they're now directly responsible for executing whatever missions the Emperor hands them in addition to their existing duties. Some of these operations are baffling and all of them are unsettling – I detail them further in the 'Mission Sets' section of this document, and the 'Key Figures' section certainly touches upon them. Finally, during the reorganisation (read: industrial-scale purge of anyone who displeased the Emperor amidst an orgy of ultraviolence) many duties and operations that were once under the purview of separate forces were rolled into the SIU's general responsibilities. The Eyes of Khar'Shan, for instance, were once a fully independent force; though they still retain a great degree of independence they're technically now a part of the SIU and answer to the Great Master.

The overall objective of this reorganisation was to concentrate power in the hands of the Emperor, and he was entirely successful. As an added bonus, cross-training and familiarisation between forces who would have ordinarily had nothing to do with each other has led to net gains in SIU efficiency, management overheads, and operational aggression. _(Addendum: ever so lovely to hear that this nightmare machine is now running on time and on budget. Can't be spending all your days in team meetings or reviewing spreadsheets when you could be out spreading weaponised smallpox on wildcat colonies, torturing some idiot rival's goons to death, or raping a couple of turian teenagers – Tiffany)_

* * *

 **Goals**

The common goals of the Special Intervention Unit are blatantly obvious and widely advertised by batarians themselves; their higher goals are far more opaque and closely guarded. Their prime-dominant objective, to be obeyed unto death and apparently beyond death (?!), is 'to serve the most high and dreaded Emperor, first chosen is He by the Dark Gods, to forever rule in Their name and to enforce Their will upon this lesser-dimensional reality-plane.'

Well then. I'm not going to comment on that further, except to say that unless the Emperor is a complete fraud and huckster then this is yet more evidence that either: A) the Dark Gods are real, living beings with a physical presence and a definite agenda, or B) for some unknown reason literally every batarian in existence believes and behaves as if A were true. We cannot discount the possibility that whatever Reaper corpse the squints managed to drag back to Khar'shan is more functional than we anticipated. You of all people understand the implications of this, sir.

The rest of their goals are largely prosaic, though I suppose anything would be when compared to that. The Unit is charged with offensive counterintelligence, foreign internal defence, and interdiction missions against alien attempts at infiltrating Batarian Space. They are expected to conduct deep strikes against elite alien assets, critical infrastructure, and of course leading political and military figures. They run all foreign intelligence gathering efforts in alien space. They also conduct scientific research into alien psychology and management of alien slaves, as well as practical development of new techniques and equipment in these fields. Finally – and most infamous of all – the SIU is responsible for the 'pacification' of any slave riots and general insurrections in Batarian Space.

* * *

 **Membership**

SIU membership is curiously bifurcated between two radically different groups – the approximate English translations would be 'The Chosen' and 'The Life-wards.' The Chosen are volunteers and either high-caste or members of the Imperial Blood, through mid-highs, who are the bastard offspring of high-caste males and middle-caste females, may be allowed to apply on a case by case basis. These mid-highs are typically given savage entry trials, but are fairly well-respected and welcomed to the Unit if they manage to survive them. Note that there is no caste marker for the offspring of a high-caste female and a mid-caste male. Such things are extraordinarily rare, and the high-caste family almost always kills the offspring and any immediate family members. Publicly suggesting to a batarian that his father was of a lower caste than him will earn you a savage beating from even the lowliest untouchable; saying it to a high-caste would result in something unspeakable, and he'd probably keep you alive for years just to make a point.

Anyone who does not meet the caste requirement is killed or enslaved for being delusional enough to apply in the first place. This fact is widely advertised, so needless to say they get very few mistaken applicants.

The Life-wards are not volunteers and are forcibly inducted into the SIU from either birth or childhood. They're typically recruited from mid and high-caste orphanages or from specially designed and managed crèche facilities. Technically a Life-ward can be mid-caste, or even mid-low if they show great promise as a biotic, Beastmaster, combat engineer, or other difficult to acquire specialist. Whilst they may not have any families of their own, there is nothing stopping Life-wards from starting one once they're fully inducted into the Unit; indeed, if they're mid-caste or lower, full SIU membership catapults them to the very peak of their caste's power structure.

Note that the training for Life-wards isn't officially complete until the batarian reaches adulthood, so the SIU has plenty of time to groom and train them or dispose of those they deem unworthy. The idea of a toddler being raised by these creatures… it's hopeless. The child has no chance of a normal life or psychological development and socialisation, even by batarian standards. By the time it reaches adulthood there's nothing anyone can do. A few manage to escape and defect, largely to elite mercenary bands or warlords like Aria, but for most it's simply too late.

* * *

 **Organisational Structure**

The Special Intervention Unit has undergone many changes over the years – particularly with the collapse of the Hegemony – but its basic command structure remains the same and would be mostly recognisable to any civilian or military intelligence specialist as well as most military officers. There is a central high command, a number of auxiliary and support units, and finally, the main Detachments that provide the various combat and operational specialities that the Unit is renowned for. The structure itself is blunt and effective, whilst the internal rankings and power structure are downright Byzantine. SIU rankings are far more elaborate than most equivalent military organisations and are almost courtly, with their arcane hierarchies and myriad official titles, each with a precise meaning. There are dozens of honorifics and titles, with still dozens more modifying prefixes and suffixes, which in turn can be shaded and weighted with the tonal Khar'shan high-speak dialect that the SIU favours. Add in the typical batarian obsession with social status, power politics, saving/gaining/giving/losing/eating face, and general macho bullshit and you have something that (after a fashion) would be oddly familiar to a human courtier in Imperial China or a Medieval Italian city-state. Morale and camaraderie amongst the Unit is impeccable, and feasts, martial competitions, flytting, and musical performances are held regularly.

It has always struck me as somehow melancholy to see what batarian high culture once was and how far it has fallen. The tragedy is that the SIU, one of the most brutal and morally corrupted bodies in the galaxy, is also one of the few repositories of batarian culture and history that still exist.

Anyway, I've provided a brief examination of both SIU high command and several sub-detachments that may be of greater interest to Cerberus. Note that some detachments correspond with an equivalent operational type detailed in the 'Mission Set' section of this document.

 **Special Intervention Command** , literally 'The Most High and Honoured Masters of the Intervention,' is the overall high command and general staff of the Special Intervention Unit. Special Intervention Command is comprised of the executive leadership of the Unit, their personal slaves and entourage, chiefs of staff, tactical and operational advisers, and the directors for the various intelligence, engineering, logistics, infowar, propaganda, and administrative units that are necessary to make the Unit function as a whole. Technically this also includes the Unit Masters who each oversee an SIU Detachment. As with all batarian forces, do not underestimate their logistics and management practices – only volus operations routinely deliver superior outcomes and efficiency gains, and batarians actually pioneered most supply chain management and just-in-time omni-manufacturing techniques used today. You can see the impact of this in their long-term conflicts with the turians, where even their State Guard units are better supplied and less resource-intensive than the standing turian military, making them extraordinarily difficult to eradicate from a defensive position.

There are well over twenty Detachments within the broader SIU command structure, but a few of these are especially relevant to Cerberus:

 **The Decimation** is the close quarters battle and mêlée shock specialists detachment of the SIU. 'Decimation' is a perfect literal translation – it turns out that Iron Age batarians were very fond of the idea of killing every tenth member of a unit just to make a point to the others. They also have dozens of words for executing other numerical percentages of a unit. _(Addendum: who says we can't find common ground with other species? – Tiffany)_

Mêlée combat is traditionally considered to be the highest expression of batarian warfare and glory, as well as the most direct and preferable way of enforcing the submission of the Other, so serving in the Decimation is seen as a great honour. Operators in this detachment train for several hours every day, preferably against live targets, but also against various Khar'shan beasts and each other.

Fighting a Decimation unit in close combat is simply not survivable for anyone but cyborgs, krogan berserkers, heavy mechs, battle-suits, asari Blademistresses and Nightwind, turian Deathwatch, and a handful of human mêlée specialists. Even Kai Leng was almost complimentary of their skills, though he noted that they 'lack finesse with the blade.' The Decimation are famous for harvesting trophies from their defeated enemies, and over the years krogan head-crests, turian plating, and (most recently) broken human skulls have been the most popular. I discuss their typical equipment loadouts and modus operandi in greater detail in the 'Combat Tactics and Equipment' section of this document.

 **The Intervention** is the SIU detachment that specialises in what we would consider deep strikes, black operations and special forces missions in alien space; I've fully detailed these operations in the 'Mission Sets' section of this document. Suffice to say that this is what most people think of when discussing the SIU, and Intervention assets are what most alien forces are likely to encounter in the course of their typical duties. Only alien black operations groups, intelligence agencies, diplomats, exiles, and those in the Terminus are likely to encounter other SIU forces – the vast majority of human and alien civilians simply living their lives almost never will.

I will concede that the Intervention is the least worst of SIU detachments and its members do seem to be slightly less monstrous and sadistic than the rest. _(Addendum: for example, Intervention officers have allegedly acquired ice cream and music albums for personal slaves that they're especially fond of, as opposed to other SIU types who would simply rape you both more and exclusively. They see this as bestowing a great honour and that the victim should be flattered. I want to be there when we kill these people – Tiffany)_

Over eighty per cent of defectors or escapees from the Unit come from the Intervention detachment, largely because they're most likely to operate in areas where they're exposed to aliens and alien culture, but do not fool yourself. Even the most restrained and professional Intervention operator will have either carried out or been an accessory to an assortment of morally bankrupt activities that would get you court-martialed and hanged in any civilised society.

 **The Seeking** is the detachment responsible for training and managing the Eyes of Khar'shan, making them the closest batarian equivalent to a foreign intelligence service. Please, please don't draw any false equivalence here – the comparison is entirely theoretical and the entire intelligence lifecycle process for the Eyes is an unforgivable atrocity. The Eyes are non-batarian aliens (including humans) raised and trained from birth on one of the many batarian slave worlds to act as their spies amongst aliens. _(Addendum: subjects can also be 'reforged' after capture. Batarians have an endless number of euphemisms for their crimes against life – Tiffany)_

By the time these damned souls emerge from the development program, they're no longer recognisable as members of their own species, though they are very good at pretending to be. No, the batarians break them, stripping away every part of their psyche and the person they once were and then transmogrifying them into some blasphemous _thing_ that makes me want to cry and scream and kill something with four eyes. I detail the 'recruitment,' 'training,' 'deployment,' and 'debriefing' process in nauseating detail later on in the 'Mission Sets' section.

 **The Mind Conquest** is the detachment responsible for psychological warfare, information warfare, and active measures against alien targets. 'Targets' in this sense can range from clearly identified individuals to small groups to tightly defined sections of an entire subculture or organisation. 'Psychological' requires more explanation, since the human and batarian practise of psychology shares nothing in common but a translation, so I strongly suggest reviewing the Cerberus File on Batarian Psychology. Mind Conquest operational philosophy and doctrine is fairly sophisticated, if cruel and amoral, and I detail it further in the 'Mission Sets' section. The Mind Conquest detachment also studies alien behavioural psychology, culture, survival instincts, religious practises (?!), and incentive responses in order to optimise the efficacy of their operations.

This detachment does technically own slaves, but their menagerie is quite small and has high turnover; they generally have ten thousand or so slaves at any one time in order to provide statistically valid sample sizes for their research purposes. Actual slavery operations and management are handled by the batarian Ministry of Enforcement or by slave owners themselves. That said, the Mind Conquest coordinates closely with both the Seeking detachment and the Enforcement Ministry, and they are largely responsible for the far more sophisticated approach batarian elites have to slave management when compared with the common brute rabble of the Empire. They know that if you offer a captive nothing but unrelenting fear and horror than they'll see no way out of their existence but death, and a dead slave is a useless slave. They therefore ensure that the slave always has a way out, a promise of some kind of survival or other positive incentive to ensure compliant behaviour and 'mind-submission.' _(Addendum: unless the death of said slave was used to make a point to living slaves, in which case it's simply prudent inventory management – Tiffany)_

An example might help illustrate this philosophy. SIU slave masters always encourage their stock to breed, not only to provide a continuous source of new slaves for the future, but also because they understand the deep bonds of family amongst most aliens and the mere existence of other family members provides an incentive for the slave to obey and work. Slaves who have five or more children are given fresh rations, toys, and the promise that the children will remain untouched for the first six years of their lives. It provides leverage over even the strongest willed captives. You may absolutely be willing to die and take as many squints with you as you can… but would you do so knowing that, after you were dead (or before, if they capture you first, which they certainly will try and do) your mate would be passed around an entire batarian army corps, your closest friends would be blinded and have their teeth and fingernails ripped out with hot serrated pliers, and your children would be fed to the starving in another camp? Would you still do it?

And to think that idiots living comfortable lives always ask why slaves don't fight back. Almost no one does when the alternative is to simply obey, work to the best of your ability, and ensure that your family and friends are spared. This is why high-caste concentration camps offer the tiniest sliver of freedom and opportunity to their captives, and it is insidiously effective. Do well, monkey, and you'll be given extra rations, purified water, and a comfortable bed. Please the most high and dreaded masters and perhaps you'll earn a musical instrument or a pleasure-slave of your own. Resist for even a moment in time and we will take everything you have and everything you are. Pray to your gods if you like, they won't save you. The only true gods live on Khar'shan. Perhaps one day you'll get to meet them.

* * *

 **Key Figures**

It's disappointingly rare that we offer an overview on key figures in the organisations opposing us, so I've taken the liberty of including them in these reports. We must know these creatures, and we cannot flinch away from anything that could make humanity stronger. Note that all of the SIU's leadership have either a single name or are known by their title alone; at this rarefied level of batarian society they each have very few equals, let alone superiors. I've also translated their official titles into English wherever possible. _(Addendum: I know. All of their titles are absurdly overblown and arrogant. The batarian ego is a force beyond space and time – Tiffany)_

 **Draug'Lir** , _Scion of the Throne of Black_ , _Eighth-Brother of the most dreaded and revered Emperor of the People_ , _Great Master of the Intervention_ , is the highest-ranking officer and overall leader of the Special Intervention Unit. 'Lir' in this case is an honorary suffix indicating that the batarian in question is a favoured son of the Imperial Blood (and a brother of the previous sitting Emperor). 'Draug,' however, is extremely unusual; it's technically an honorific prefix that implies the Honoured One in question acts as a conduit to the Dark Gods themselves, 'to execute their will on this shallow plane of existence and to be obeyed without question.' That one of his eyes has been removed, covered by scar tissue, and seared with the Mark of the Pillars is extremely unsettling – it is an honour that can only be bestowed by the Emperor himself and requires the bearer to ritually submerge themselves beneath the waters of the Lake of Black itself. Few outside of what we believe to be the batarian religious structure are accorded the title, and the vast majority of them are secluded in the Imperial Palace or live as hermits around the Lake of Black. As a batarian who has had all his names removed, there is no record of what his real name was.

Like all of his caste, he is in perfect physical condition and outperforms even the purest high-caste batarians in terms of reasoning, intelligence, healing and recovery, reflexes, cardio, strength, and cunning. Everything. We don't know how the Imperial Blood achieves such universally high outcomes amongst its ranks, but we suspect it is tied to the recent batarian developments in biotechnology. This isn't natural, given the sheer size of the Imperial-caste, and statistically it isn't possible unless every single one of them is somehow representative of one in a billion batarians. Regardless, Draug'Lir is as confident and at ease with his sheer power as you'd expect, given that there's literally just two batarians alive – his eldest brother and the Emperor himself – who can rightfully request anything from him.

On paper it seems absurd for a twenty-five-year-old to be in command of such a powerful and respected institution as the SIU, but don't fool yourself, Draug'Lir is a deadly opponent, and the the SA has already suffered the cost of underestimating him. Unlike so many of the immediate Imperial Blood, Draug'Lir wasn't given this as a ceremonial position – he was a former 'Bloodied Sceptre' (what we believe to be a fleet commander) of the Imperial Guard stationed at Khar'shan itself, and he earned his scars every step of the way. He was the commander responsible for the total destruction of the 42nd N-Team and its entire support deployment, and it was he who took possession of the battered remains of the strike leader.

We know this because he sent the AIS the ultra-high definition video of him preparing her for what I can only describe as a sacramental desecration, before using what remained of her body fluids to paint the camera with the glyphs for 'flawed-bloodline monkey too well-used to mount.' The AIS classified this tape and it has never been released outside of their custody; her partner and children were told that she died quickly and painlessly in an explosion during the battle.

For once, I approve of the SA lying and cynically covering up the truth.

 **Kassar Taash Guul** , _Fell Mace of the Decimation of the Mal'Hai_ , is, as his title suggests, the commander of the SIU's Decimation Detachment. 'Kassar Tash' is another honorific prefix phrase, which in this case means 'hallowed bloodletter.' The phrase carries connotations of brutality and total submission of one's foes in battle, as well as a disgusting sexual aspect that implies the Honoured One is entitled to 'first blood' – that is to say, first pick of any 'unused' captives (gender irrelevant). The only exception to this entitlement is if a higher-ranking Master – that is, Draug'Lir – insisted on claiming the right of first blood, in which case it would be considered polite to offer Guul a chance to go second in order for him to save face. _(Addendum: Mal'Hai is an extremely derogatory term for non-batarians – Tiffany)_

Even for a member of the Decimation, Guul is an unnatural freak. He's tested a staggering five standard deviations from the mean on medical examinations for muscle mass, latent aggression, healing response, and combat reflexes, which I guess explains him better than I ever could. Unfortunately, he's not entirely an idiot brute, and has in fact written several philosophical treatises arguing that the purpose of existence is to offer a deliberate struggle against life itself, which he believes is the highest calling of all batarians, and that the truest expression of this eternal struggle is to be found in the total destruction of one's foes in mêlée combat. _(Addendum: his latest was a bestseller in Batarian Space last year, and far too many Corsair captains have it on their omni-tools for me to be comfortable with – Tiffany)_

He has a great fetish for collecting and preparing trophies from foes he has defeated, and so far, his cabinet includes two N-Series skulls (one N1 female, one N3 male), the head-crest of the third-last krogan Loresinger in existence (when he discovered she was pregnant he reportedly broke his favourite ale mug laughing and had the stillbirth prepared too), a necklace made from Blackwatch ID tags, and (most cherished of all) the fully-restored skeletal display of an enraged elcor berserker. It appears this fetish has spread to the rest of the Detachment and is now standard practise.

That stunt with the fertile Loresinger cost him dearly. She may have been disgraced and associated with the Ganar clan, but a Loresinger is still a Loresinger, and a fertile one is even more revered. The SIU has lost dozens of operatives to krogan blood-rage specialists who've sworn revenge on Guul and all his kind, but, in classic batarian fashion, Guul just doesn't give a shit about what happens to anyone but him.

 **Jormarg Vik'Kan** , _Piercing Strike of the Emperor's Intervention_ , is the fourth highest-ranking flag officer in the SIU and commands the Intervention Detachment. He is the highest-ranking holdover from the times before the Hegemonic Collapse and was widely expected to command the Unit had the Hegemony remained intact. Despite this, there is no known bad blood between him and the other ranking officers; he's a mid-high Life-ward who's been in the Unit since he was six months old and is now a Master, so his loyalty and competence are considered beyond question. Vik'Kan is a strange creature and is probably the one most responsible for the image the SIU enjoys in popular culture and amongst most alien militaries. He's extremely careful to ensure that any INTERVENTION activities carried out in alien space with a probable likelihood of post-action discovery are no more objectionable than the activities of any other alien black operations group, and he coordinates closely with other Unit Masters to spread propaganda and execute psychological operations that reinforce this perception.

Which brings us neatly to that idiotic AIS operation to entice him to defect; honestly, why people think a batarian is 'more approachable' simply because he's less publically evil than his companions baffles me. No, I'm not going to recount that operation here. Yes, it was a tremendous failure – made worse by the fact that other Unit Masters found out about it, which in turn required Vik'Kan to respond in the most extreme possible manner, lest he lose face. _(Addendum: Literally. He'd be blinded and cannibalised by Draug'Lir for the merest hint of treason. I will admit that the SIU has a refreshingly firm attitude when dealing with traitors. Maybe you should put out word that you'll eat the next person you find spying for the Shadow Broker? – Tiffany)_

I believe the AIS Deputy Assistant Director (Batarian Desk) had his operatives returned to him in the form of a statue for his office, made from heat-warped bones and tanned and cured human hides scrawled with numbers. The Christmas lights and glitter were certainly a festive touch.

It was only a few days later that the AIS realised that the numbers scrawled onto the skins weren't just random. Most were crude insults – implying the monkey's wife was unfaithful, Vik'Kan bragging about his virility and superior vocal range, the usual dick-waving squint bullshit – but the Deputy Assistant Director soon discovered that the last two were the number plate for his son's new aircar and the longitude and latitude of his daughter's university dorm room.

Vik'Kan didn't follow up on this. He just wanted the man to know that he knew.

Vik'Kan is a hobbyist force-opera practitioner of some renown and supposedly has an 'interest' in creative types and alien artists; for the people he captures it's more of a cult of personality and Stockholm Syndrome brought about by years of post-traumatic stress, Pavlovian reinforcement, and the grinding attrition of time. His personal slaves were all musicians, painters, sculptors, comedians, and street performers in their past lives and despite being the property of one of the vilest creatures in known space, are fawningly submissive and loyal to him, having debased their minds and bodies before Draug'Lir as they begged to remain in Vik'Kan's service. _(Addendum: he hates writers though, describing them as 'lesser forms of creation, fit only for mounting or eating.' We have no idea why, but writers he captures are usually passed around the entire Unit before being shot in the head and the body incinerated – Tiffany)_

 **Mor'Ran Bael** , _Dominant-Prime of the Mind Conquest_ , is (obviously) the commander of the 'Mind Conquest' detachment. 'Mor'Ran' appears to be a rare honorific prefix, and though we don't fully understand what it means we suspect it praises the ability of the Honoured One to 'subdue the mind without breaking the body.' Intensely charismatic, highly intelligent, and truly gifted with words and showmanship, Bael is above all else a _thing_ that uses everything and everyone around him. Read the 'Organisational Structure' and 'Mission Set' sections of this document that cover his detachment and then ask yourself what kind of malevolent freak rises to command it. He's not a particularly impressive combatant – at least by SIU standards – but then that isn't really what his role calls for.

He earned the nickname 'Monkey Charmer' during a feast celebrating the appointment of Draug'Lir as SIU Master. After being drunkenly challenged to a bet by a third cousin of the Emperor, he remotely accessed an Imperial Guard FTL comm buoy that was piggybacked onto the Alliance News Network interplanetary communications web. This is turn allowed him to hack into the (completely unsecured!) Bekenstein Mental Health Helpline where, over four hours and in front of the entire room, he convinced one hundred and thirty-seven human men, women, and teenagers to either commit suicide, murder-suicide, tear out their eyes, or immolate themselves for the Dark Gods. Such a lively performance at a key feast was deemed both hilarious by all present and a suitable feast-gift to an esteemed Scion of the Emperor, and he's still seen as something of a cheeky scamp by his peers.

Bael also has a taste for 'acquiring' religious leaders from various alien races and subjecting them to his hospitality; salarian Wheel Priests and leaders from the human Abrahamic religions are his first choice, but if he cannot find any religious figures then his preference appears to be people who specialise in fields similar to his – that is to say, fields where a keen understanding of psychology and social engineering are required. Psychologists, politicians, intelligence and security specialists, and teachers are his current favourites. Again, Bael does not have any physical contact with these people. He just sits with them in a room and talks.

Naturally, the end result of their time with him is publicised for all to see, partly for bragging rights amongst his fellow batarians and partly to torment his victims. A captured Blue Stars No More representative from the wildcat colonies made a live breakfast broadcast where he renounced our entire species, declaring all humans to be "unworthy of licking the feet of the Great Masters," before chaining weights to his body and drowning himself face down in a bathtub full of batarian semen. Another broadcast showed two Wheel Priests, a Spirit Shrine caretaker, and eight various human religious leaders cooking and eating each other's legs as they chattered to dinner party guests that only they could see, praising the magnificence of the Dark Gods and the smoky bite of the hot pepper sauce.

I regret to inform you that the most recent broadcast was that of a former Cerberus psychologist; the man had retired about a year ago after sustaining a medical injury and had started working at a low-cost clinic in the wildcat colonies when his transport was captured by the SIU. The footage is a montage of cuts every fifteen minutes, beginning with his initial defiance and tracking his descent into personality fragmentation and suicidal despair. It covers two hours of real-time. The video ends with him blaming you for everything, sir, before he flings himself naked into the beast-pit as Bael laughs and tries to hold the camera steady.

 _(Addendum: eyes only: Chambers: I'm told Dev was a friend and colleague of yours, Kelly. I'm so sorry. We will avenge him – Tiffany)_

This is simply a taste of the sheer sickness and frightening skill of this creature. Everything he does is designed to manipulate, cajole, influence, or simply dominate the mind of a target. I suspect he truly doesn't care who the targets even are, so long as there are targets. I'd call him a sociopath, but such a term is laughably weak.

[ **Error: no entry** ], _All-Seeing Scourge of the Mal'Hai_ , is the Master of the detachment responsible for managing the Eyes of Khar'shan. We know that this man and this position exist – it's been confirmed through multiple third parties and interrogation of SIU defectors – but nobody, not us, not the STG, not the Nightwind, not the Deathwatch, not even the Broker himself, seems to know the true identity of the figure responsible for the unforgivable barbarism that is the Eyes of Khar'shan. This creature seems to delight in _not_ having an identity or even a permanent existence, reportedly claiming that "the truest and most high state of perfection is to be formless and featureless, to sublimate your existence to this un-life ideal, to let your entire being dissolve into the sea so that you may drown your foes within its dark waters." Considering what his colleagues are like and the unbearable cruelty of his entire detachment… frankly, I'm glad we don't know more about this figure. At this point more data isn't going to offer any actionable intelligence, only more evidence that we would be morally justified in carrying out the genocide of the batarian species.

 **The Augur** , (alternative title translations: ' _Oracle_ ,' ' _Oculus,_ ' ' _Speaker of the Dark Gods_ ,' ' _He who fell from the heavens and emerged anew from the Lake of Black_ ') is technically the only civilian member of the Unit, and the details and purpose of his role are not entirely clear to us. The Augur makes a ritual pilgrimage to the Lake of Black exactly every six months. These are Earth-standard months, not the Khar'shan equivalent, and when I say 'exact' I mean it – his visits are timed by an array of quantum entangled atomic clocks to be within plus or minus sixty seconds of his arrival and departure times on the last visit six months earlier. We don't know what this means.

The Augur also visits Nirvana Technologies on Noveria (see the NDC file for further details), again at six month intervals, though these are not timed in the same manner. He is surrounded by a retinue of Imperial Blood seers and carries that swirling opaque orb with him at all times. Evidence of the Augur leading blood sacrifices and live offerings to the Dark Gods is difficult to confirm at such a distance, but seeing as the exact same story is being told to us by multiple sources – all of whom have been reliable in the past and have no contact with one another – I believe we have to take this claim seriously.

No one seems to want to ask just why the Dark Gods would require bloodletting rituals and live victims, or what real purpose this serves.

The STG, Shadow Broker, and the Hades Group are all deeply interested in this figure, but as far as we know, they have not had any more success than we have. A joint League of Zero/Deathwatch operation actually made an attempt on his life three years ago, when the Augur was visiting a remote ruined garden world in the Shrike Abyssal. Fragmented League of Zero data dumps provided to the Council confirm evidence of nanothreading and indicate pos-comms up until the Augur was within exactly one kilometer of the ambush site; we assume the strike force successfully attempted to engage, but all they managed to send out was a kill-switch broadcast for emergency extraction and reinforcement from the Deathwatch, and a League unit screaming in binary that "/reality_root_source: DarkGods: real: self-terminating self-terminating self-terminating."

The teams were never recovered, and a follow-up visit to the site one year later found no traces of forensic evidence.

* * *

 **Mission Sets**

Some of the mission sets translate perfectly well into English, others I've transcribed in Romanised form with the correct Khar'shan dialect pronunciation and a brief definition. Readers should keep in mind that this dialect relies heavily on spoken tone, body language, and even smell, and is always guttural and aggressive to the ear. Multiple SIU operational mission sets are some combination of sick, evil, or disturbing in both conceptualization and execution. At least you as a reader were spared from reviewing the physical, audio-visual, and haptic feedback evidence of these activities.

MIND CONQUEST: As I mentioned earlier, most of the Mind Conquest detachment is occupied with research and development activities in Batarian Space, though they do dedicate a good twenty-five to forty-five per cent of their time and resources on external operations against alien targets depending on current ops tempos.

Mind Conquest mission sets offer a certain degree of flexibility to their operatives, depending on the nature of the target and the desired outcome, but they are all uniformly sadistic, morally repulsive, and actively designed to enforce terror on the target and spread trauma in a population. These are broad target profiles designed to illustrate typical Mind Conquest operations. Rest assured that if they have a specific target then SIU xenopsychologists and social engineers will spend weeks carefully building a personality construct of the person in question, with a great deal of thought and debate given to deciding what tactics would be best suited to achieve their mission objectives. There is always a tactical or strategic purpose to these active measures. The targets might be financial analysts chasing SIU money laundering trails, or the militia commander of an outpost that the Unit plans to hit in a couple of weeks. Engineering PTSD, suicidal thoughts, depression, and other psychological and physiological conditions in the target will almost always compromise their professional duties and weaken them, making them easier prey for the rest of the Unit.

Abusive terror tactics are typically used on targets that operatives deem most sensitive and receptive to such material. This is often people with a higher than usual degree of empathy or who work in fields requiring a great deal of emotional labour – teachers, social workers, psychologists, emergency responders and medical staff, people with certain intuitive or introverted personality traits, and so on. People who care, whether they want to or not, or whose work requires them to care. One favourite, when dealing with humans, is to hack into their social media networks – a trivial effort for SIU infowar specialists – and send an anonymous video of a gang-rape film, with the victim's face and features digitally altered to perfectly match those of the target's son, daughter, grandparents, wife, et cetera. A turian target might receive a video showing fertilised turian eggs being eaten by predators, a salarian footage of a trainee Wheel Priest screaming mad prophecies as he immolates himself, an asari a tape of another asari having her crests removed with a hacksaw, and so on. Whether or not the footage is real or fake is irrelevant so long as it affects the target, and such material need not be so extreme to be effective – if doctoring evidence of your spouse cheating on you is what works, then the SIU will happily do it. Unit operators are often disappointed to see just how far simple bribes of cash and pleasure-slaves can get them amongst contractors and support staff on backwater worlds. _(Addendum: it's pathetic to see just how many weak-willed humans will sell out our entire species for a credit chit and an easy lay – Tiffany)_

'Gentler' and less extreme tactics are favoured when dealing with more logical or intellectual targets, such as analysts, mathematicians, philosophers, engineers, and academics. These people might be gradually exposed to batarian concepts – typically drawn from the Pillars – that cause them to doubt their own beliefs and existence. These materials mostly involve the negation of morality and virtue (in the sense that concepts like altruism and love actually having a negative mathematical value that cannot be valid outside of a closed system designed to artificially inflate its worth), non-Euclidean equations and theorems (typically proving the existence of the Dark Gods or demonstrating their capabilities), and physical art (almost always batarian statues and murals focusing on themes of submission, despair, and the sublimation of life and darkness within the dream-world of the Great Ones). The operational objective in these cases is to engineer personality fragmentation, inaction, and hopelessness in the target.

Gaslighting the target is also extremely popular, with teams targeting every person and every object around the target in an effort to make them question every facet of their own reality, though sometimes direct action against the target is employed instead. Your parents might receive a letter, 'accidentally' sent to their omni-tool instead of yours, pretending to be your healthcare provider and offering you various payment options on your next round of lung cancer treatments; your parents' communications are subtly rerouted so that they can't contact you for two weeks after that. You might be at work when you receive an untraceable TTL call and have to listen to an elderly man begging for someone to find him as a broken nursery rhyme or raw industrial noise loops in the background. You might wake up in the dead of night and roll over, only to see a massive batarian standing naked outside your window, covered in menstrual blood and grinning as he stares at you. By the time the police arrive to investigate, the haptic projector has self-destructed.

At first, many people think that these psychological operations ultimately result in blowback for the batarians, since we humans are enraged and fight harder when cornered. And we do. It's a beautiful thing, to act in the righteous defence of our people and cleanse the galaxy of such creatures. But that doesn't negate the effects and the aftermath of these kinds of actions. Consider the First Contact War as a perfect example: the turians committed atrocity after atrocity, massacre after massacre, and ultimately this spurred us on to even greater heights of defiance… but that did nothing to change the casualty figures after the war ended. Tens of millions dead, tens of millions more wounded, and just over two hundred million people traumatised in some manner from what they'd experienced. For some it was the horror of losing the people you grew up with, or knowing that you'd left comrades behind who were going to die horribly, or that there was nothing you could do to stop the turian advance. There are a lot of reasons why. The same applies here. Yes, our Marines will fight when faced with such horrors, but they cannot help but be shaken when the see a video of a former DACT trooper, blinded and maimed, being forced to dance in the corner by the batarian soldiers mocking him. They see an example of humanity, stronger and more accomplished than they are, utterly broken. A civilian might hear the recording of a young boy or girl captured from the same colony that civilian lives on, hear them cry and brokenly ask if they're doing well as the track is distorted by a cruel laugh and the slurping of an ale cup. This affects people. They can't help but be affected. Don't underestimate the damage these atrocities can spread within an infomemetic sphere.

INTERVENTION: These are the missions most people (read: poorly informed and educated low-born trash, majoring in unemployment and welfare fraud, blindly lapping up whatever bullshit is served up to them by their adaptive social media VI algorithms) think of when asked what the Unit actually does. INTERVENTION activities are, to a point and relative to the trauma parade that is literally everything else the SIU does, fairly mainstream and broadly comparable to the activities of various alien Special Forces (including ours).

They carry out forward reconnaissance and deep strikes against critical alien infrastructure, such as eezo mines, fuel dumps, command and control facilities, FTL communications backbone nodes, and heavy shipbuilding and repair docks. They are charged with the interception and neutralisation of enemy intelligence assets trying to operate in Batarian Space. (Needless to say, no one they capture enjoys a quick death). Batarian VIPs will generally have escorts from the Intervention for those rare trips outside of their own space. Provocations against wildcat colonies, poorly protected trade lanes, and isolated alien settlements intended to probe alien defences and test how they react. False flag attacks against alien or even batarian targets, all designed to encourage civil war and infighting (turians are the primary target in these instances) or otherwise offer a flimsy legal excuse for an appalling batarian counterattack.

Assassinations, targeted killings, and outright terrorism are quite common, though Vik'Kan is always careful to ensure that plausible deniability is maintained at all times. No Unit operators can wear or make use of any identifying markers or leave forensic evidence or a digital trail that could lead back to the SIU, so a bewildering array of cutouts, dead-ends, shell companies, catspaws, and proxies are employed; their tradecraft isn't quite on par with ours or the Broker, but it certainly is good enough that investigators are usually faced with a large and equally plausible range of suspects and motives, not just obvious SIU leads.

Intervention operators are occasionally charged with surveillance of alien targets that pique the interest of the Unit Masters, the Hegemon, or the Emperor (peculiarly, outcast hanar individuals and dig sites have been a priority over the last fourteen months). Occasional abductions and kidnappings of said aliens are attempted if feasible. Black bag operations targeting esoteric researchers, academic institutes and think tanks, and pre-modern archaeological sites have become increasingly common over the last twenty-five years, and the SIU has actually clashed with drell and hanar expeditions on similar missions.

Finally, Intervention operators also act as general-purpose death squads, both within and outside Batarian Space, in order to support high-caste and Imperial slaving operations, eliminate batarian recidivists and dissidents, and, in conjunction with the Mind Conquest Detachment, to further their strategic doctrine of 'resonant' violence through the physicality of the deed and the triumph of batarian will. This is essentially a batarian application of shock and awe taken to a logical extreme, with the objective being to render the Other broken and powerless through the application of overwhelming violence and suffering against all non-batarian life; upon witnessing such undeniable might, the Other must submit. Technically this is state terrorism – which most batarians seem to find endlessly amusing – but readers should note that, when viewed through this lens, batarian atrocity and brutality is to them entirely sensible, even unremarkable. It's as intellectually grounded as life and liberty are to us.

That should about cover it.

This doesn't mean that INTERVENTION operatives don't take part in other mission sets; they do, you just don't hear about them. In a more just and gentler galaxy most of these activities would be considered offensive and gratuitously violent by themselves, but sadly we don't live in such a place. We live in galaxy where Cerberus is not just a necessity, but a righteous moral imperative. As I mentioned in the NDC file, you're either with us or you're part of the problem and should be dealt with as such.

DEVASTATION: A fairly clean translation, but one that nonetheless fails to capture the full implication of devastating a superior force through cunning and strength, and more importantly in full display of the enemy's cowering master. _(Addendum: batarians have an incredible number of words to describe every subtle distinction on a Venn diagram of social perception, power politics, and violence – Tiffany)_

DEVASTATION missions are highly unusual amongst the opposing forces groups that we study in that the intended target is _other_ black operations organisations. The SIU will deliberately target certain elite or clandestine alien assets: Blackwatch, Deathwatch, STG, AIS, N-Teams, the Shadow Broker and, of course, Cerberus have been their preferred targets during these last eighteen months. Rumours that they've been clashing with the Hades Group in the wildcat regions bordering the Terminus are unconfirmed at this point, though three SIU forward scouts were found bisected by a monomolecular blade consistent with Richard William's suspected enforcer, and two SIU snuff tapes of Hades personnel interrogations were purchased by one of our assets on Omega. I've attached what we know of these raids in a separate sub-file, but suffice to say the SIU sees these missions as important and devotes something like ten to fifteen per cent of their time and resources on them.

They've had mixed success. STG teams have superior technology and are deadly if they have time to prepare, but are eviscerated by SIU operators in close quarters or running battles. AIS/N-Teams have actually extracted SIU defectors during the collapse of the Hegemony, though no doubt the teams that simply went dark were captured by the SIU or (God have mercy on these human souls) the Imperial Guard. Cerberus has clashed with them before in the Terminus. Bizarrely, the Shadow Broker seems to _enjoy_ the fact that the SIU wishes to match swords with him (It? Her? Them?). SIU operators fare well against your typical Broker goons, but have suffered heavy losses against elite Broker agents; obviously Tazzik and Tetrimus… but an entire reinforced platoon of SIU broke and ran when Midnight's Kiss was deployed against them, for reasons that will become apparent later in this document. Word was that the Draug'Lir cannibalised the SIU company commander for the disgraceful act of fleeing from a woman on the battlefield. _(Addendum: people who have failed him appear to make up a significant portion of Draug'Lir's diet – Tiffany)_

Regardless of the target, DEVASTATION mission sets are closely aligned with batarian psychology. Unlike, say, salarians, batarians simply don't care about keeping a violent act hidden and have no concerns over being caught or held responsible. The entire point of the act is that it is public and resonates in the mind of the participant, shocking and paralysing them through sheer terror, strength, and force of will. The subject thus recognises the batarian as a great being worthy of respect, even if only for a moment in time, and through repeated activity this response can be 'seared' on the target's psyche and culture. Whilst it's extremely unlikely that the Batarian Empire has performed any peer-reviewed scientific studies of this, they certainly do believe it and it does inform their actions. _(Addendum: this is commonly referred to as the 'batarian resonance theory of violence' – Tiffany)_

Please see the Cerberus File on Batarian Psychology for more details.

HOL SHAR B'KOST: Pronounced 'hole shar ba-KOST,' spoken with malice and purpose, inferior mode of address, defined as 'to burn the whole until cleansed.' If there was ever a report to put an end to the frankly disgusting notion that the SIU are somehow 'better than those other batarians' or 'more like us' then please God let it be this one. HOL SHAR B'KOST mission sets refer to SIU actions designed to put down slave revolts – or any kind of revolt really – as well as any attempts at rebellion or insurrection within the Batarian Empire that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Imperial Guard. Seeing as only Khar'shan and a handful of bizarrely well-defended water worlds are the responsibility of the Imperial Guard, these missions keep the SIU quite busy.

Most slave revolts in the Empire (and the Hegemony) are the result of socioeconomic collapse (such as when there's a natural disaster, crop failure, or water contamination), extreme cruelty and abuse (which is pretty much continuous), or uprisings led by charismatic leaders. The last revolt in a human slave camp was approximately eight months ago and occurred on an otherwise unremarkable agricultural and mining world near the spinward batarian territories. Curiously, leaders of these rebellions tend to follow certain archetypes, at least amongst humans. Former soldiers or cops, wise elders, religious figures, working-class heroes, et cetera are all several times more likely to try and lead a slave uprising. They aren't any more likely to be successful, however.

As far as we can tell, a human couple had a disabled child born in the slave camp. The child soon began displaying the symptoms of a non-neurotypical condition (likely autism, though Asperger's is also possible). The camp overseer had never encountered such a thing before and obviously wasn't educated on the subject; batarians generally dismiss such things as weak and pathetic flaws that are clearly the result of inferior monkey genetics. The overseer took the child to the common area, saying that he was getting 'medicine' for the boy. He injected the boy with a Glorious-level dosage of the Emperor's Grace, the serum that artificially induces and/or accelerates the rampant nerve cluster growth that allows for the creation of batarian biotics.

Eyewitnesses and SIU records stolen by Vigil stated that the boy took four hours to die, bleating like an animal as his body erupted in cancers and knotted bundles of mutated nerves. By the time the SIU arrived the slave riot had been going for over thirty-six hours and well over half of the garrison and three-quarters of the slaves were dead or dying. The SIU put down ninety per cent of the slaves and executed the entire garrison for incompetence. It was only by accident that we managed to intercept the transport carrying the survivors in the Terminus.

I had to watch the footage that Vigil acquired, sir. I had to listen to the records. I had to read the debriefing and interrogation transcripts. I even met with a small number of people who've either taken part in rescue operations on batarian slave camps (like Petrovsky's pet Brazilian – Volinski, wasn't it? The one in charge of our counter-slaving operations). I've talked to people who've been in those camps. I'm not going to put it all here in writing. I don't think I can. You haven't seen and heard and _felt_ the other methods they've used to put down a slave revolt. Elcor forced to stand in a pressure chamber, surrounded by sheer drops, as the gravity is gradually increased to a hundred times that of their homeworld and the atmosphere slowly turns to sulphur and ammonia. Turians flayed of their plating and exposed to carcinogenic doses of ionising radiation, or starved and forced to eat food of the wrong chirality and drink saltwater. Salarians given nerve stimulants and hallucinogenic drugs, and then locked in sensory deprivation tanks for days. Groups of humans forced to watch live abortions of foetuses carried by their friends or relatives, everyone present so flat and empty and utterly without hope that the entire procedure takes place in total silence. None of it was necessary. They could have just asked the slaves to do anything they wanted of them and the poor souls would have obeyed without question.

I… I threw up a few times and the nightmares come and go, but the medicines are helping, and I have to admit, Ms. Chambers was comforting and offered wise advice. We may clash at times, but she is certainly an asset for this organisation. I was wrong about her, and told her so.

Excuse me. Let us continue.

UMLOR MOR'LOK: Pronounced 'oom-law more-LOCK,' spoken with self-satisfied ironic amusement, equal mode of address, defined as 'give the gift of sight to the blind.' The batarian sense of humour makes itself apparent with a revolting yet rather witty wordplay referring to the process of recruiting, deploying, and debriefing the Eyes of Khar'shan. These people may be trained as saboteurs, deep cover assets, assassins, suicide agents, or simply intelligence gatherers through an unending regime of Pavlovian reward/punishment schemes, chemical adjustment and hypnotic stasis therapy, direct neural shunts, and the sort of psychological manipulation and abuse that batarian 'mind conquest' specialists excel at. Subjects are given extensive schooling in how to blend in with alien cultures and alien peoples, and often train in the Terminus Systems or on Omega. Aria either gets paid in hard eezo for the trouble or they'll take out one of her enemies as payment for hosting them. It's a fairly low-key relationship and a mutually beneficial one… but the fact that the Special Intervention Unit treats Aria T'Loak, an asari, with such respect – even using the superior mode of address when speaking to her! – is both impressive and appalling. What did she do to earn it from these creatures?

The Eyes are frequently equipped with bionetic implants – normally ones enhancing social skills, memory function, and strength and speed – and 'accidently' lost in crowds of travellers, refugees, slaves, etc. They perform their missions before heading back to a predetermined rendezvous point, normally in the Terminus. Subjects that excel are given extra rewards, including slaves of their own, travel and recreational privileges, or being raped exclusively by an SIU flag officer. This has been confirmed by multiple intelligence sources as well as classified interrogations carried out by C-Sec Special Investigations. We suspect the chemical blockers, symbiote organisms and hypnotic stasis therapy so alter the subject's psychology that the expected Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms do not manifest, along with any of the other psychological issues associated with such an existence. The subjects are physically altered to enjoy their condition and beg for more. _(Addendum: batarians are irredeemable and must be eradicated from the universe – Tiffany)_

Eyes are typically human, salarian, and turian, though there have been unconfirmed reports of elcor, volus, and quarian subjects. Asari subjects are rarer, but do exist. We've observed roughly equal numbers of male and female Eyes, for species that have those two genders. That these poor lost souls are complicit in their suffering without even knowing it… is there nothing to be done? Is there no way we can put an end to the pain they can't even recognise at this point? Do their families ever know what happened to their children?

VASH NAG GAUR: Pronounced 'vahsh nahg gow-er,' spoken with awe and reverence, superior mode of address, defined as 'to respectfully offer tribute to the Great One, blessed is He with the might of the Dark Gods.' This refers to the missions that the Augur undertakes in service to the Dark Gods; the details I mentioned earlier about the Augur are essentially all we know about him in terms of operational behaviour. Or at least, that was all that we could confirm as reliable intelligence that could be corroborated through other trustworthy sources. There are an endless number of stories and rumours surrounding the Augur and VASH NAG GAUR mission sets, and everyone has a theory. All of these stories tend to have similar themes: strange disappearances, individuals displaying extreme behavioural disorders (much like Miss Goto's mysterious contact in her heist on the Black Zone), temporal and physical paradoxes, events and abilities that shouldn't be possible in a closed system obeying classical rules of physics, a relentless sense of creeping dread and insignificance in a universe we don't understand, and so on. But these all keep missing the point: the most striking conclusion from this data isn't that the stories are disturbing… it's that the Dark Gods are living beings, physically present in this galaxy, and that they have goals and ultimately a purpose. They aren't in the Milky Way with _us_ ; we're trapped here with _them_.

* * *

 **Combat Tactics and Equipment**

It depresses me that this is most palatable section of this document.

SIU combat doctrine emphasises shock and trauma, cunning and misdirection, overwhelming power, the careful application of terror tactics, decapitation of enemy leadership and elites, and an arsenal of high-explosives and grenades that a retired STG ops planner once called 'achingly beautiful.' SIU weapons and tactics are notorious throughout the galaxy at this point, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any mercenary, killer, or spook worth listening to who doesn't have a few cautionary tales and scars to show you. SIU instruction manuals and training material on the use of traps, explosives, and ambushes are highly sought after on the black market and former operatives from the Unit have no trouble finding work on Omega. Assuming their colleagues don't hunt them down first, of course, in which case a bullet or a flesh hook in each of their eyes is the kindest treatment they can look forward to. As I said before, the Unit does not abide traitors, and you either leave in a coffin or you don't leave at all.

I really can't overemphasise just how fond the Unit is of high-explosives and grenades. Not only does the use of such weapons align perfectly with their general operational doctrine and mission objectives, it also meshes very well with batarian psychology and even physiology. As discussed elsewhere in the Cerberus Files, batarian musculature and cartilage structures are highly flexible and especially suited to resisting pressure, shock, and blasts. They also have a good tolerance for heat and an excellent tolerance for pain. In turn, batarian psychology compels them to establish dominance, and the preferred choice is through the application of direct and overwhelming force until the target submits – hence the batarian affection for close combat and prolonged attacks. The ultimate strategic purpose of their combat doctrine, beyond any tactical applications, is to demonstrate and enforce superiority. Even on an instinctual, evolutionary level, the batarian seeks to shatter an enemy's mind and body with undeniable power.

One cannot mention the SIU without their infamous weapons of choice: the Striker assault weapon and the Raider shotgun. Both make heavy use of carbon fibres and ultralight composites in their construction and both are extraordinarily resistant to environmental damage and general wear and tear; laboratory analysis of captured samples suggests that this is the result of cutting-edge omni-printing fabrication techniques. This provides more of a battlefield edge than you'd expect – a Raider may hit with fifty per cent of the force of a Claymore or ODIN, but it weighs only twenty per cent as much, allowing the user to carry that much more ammunition, make quicker snapshots, and greatly reduce fatigue… particularly in the kind of long-running battles that batarians excel at. The Raider has a bore that you could stick your thumb into and even stock models can handle a remarkable variety of rounds, including solid slug, high-explosive, pyro-corrosive, biological, and nanological; armour-piercing heavy metal shards and antipersonnel splinter rounds are equipped in the default configuration. Meanwhile, the Striker makes use of flash-fabbed micro-grenade rounds that generally deliver payloads designed to prolong the damage and agony of the initial impact; a standard ammo block can be used in emergencies with only thirty or forty seconds of reconfiguration in the field, turning the Striker into something similar to a Crossfire rifle, though the firing rate is much slower. If you'd like to see the effects of these weapons on standard human infantry in shitty Onyx armour, ask a Marine to swan dive into a meatgrinder.

A standard SIU squad is four operatives led by a senior operative. All operatives are equipped with easily recognisable combat armour made from carbon nanotubes and synthetic spider silk analogues, giving it a sleekly elegant and devilishly sinister appearance. _(Addendum: why do evil people have the best tailors? – Tiffany)_

This armour offers excellent protection against most small arms fire at any range, rifles at medium to long-range, shotguns at anything but close quarters, and is highly resistant to slashing and blunt force trauma. It's also far lighter than any comparable equipment, which, as with their weapons, allows for a host of combat advantages. Operatives are also equipped with an enhanced omni-tool offering a range of infowar, interrogation and subjugation capabilities as well as a neural shock function.

Many Unit operators also make use of haptic camouflage bands and an eight to twelve second photonic cloak as well as suit overlays designed to negate sound and emissions across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Mêlée combat with an SIU operative is… not recommended. batarians delight in hand-to-hand fighting and, as I mentioned before, each member of the Chosen is selected from the best high-caste volunteers. Expect two point one meters and one hundred seventy-five kilos of muscle honed by at least twenty-five years of training and field experience. Mid-caste Life-wards are somewhat smaller, true, but still on par with a very fit and tough human male. And do I even need to mention how stupid it is to try and fight one of the Decimation up-close? I'm going to mention it anyway. Start with a typical height and mass of two point four meters and two hundred twenty kilos, respectively, and then add the rest: Decimation CQB specialists are ALL high-caste or Imperial Blood savages who are trained and equipped exclusively for overwhelming slaughter at close-range, and especially for ship-boarding parties or urban environments.

These creatures will take apart a squad of human Furies, and the shattered krogan head-crests some use to decorate their armour speak for themselves. A good forty per cent of them have cyberware modifications – highly unusual for batarians – and roughly the same number are equipped with bio-symbiotic organisms that dramatically boost muscle mass, pain resistance, wound regeneration, adrenaline and endorphin production, testosterone levels, and overall aggression. Omni-maces, kinetic hammers, monofilament whips, electroshock discharge clubs, and even monomolecular maces are employed alongside a remarkable collection of thermobaric grenades and high-explosives. Decimation boarding actions and space station skirmishes are little more than charnel houses. _(Addendum: specially bred Khar'shan war-beasts should always be expected, and unlike batarians these will happily eat you raw. They may even prefer it – Tiffany)_

Despite all of this, the SIU are not invincible: they've certainly been killed or defeated in the past and they do have clear weaknesses, chief of which is their lack of biotics. Whilst every SIU team does train in counter-biotic tactics, and can call upon support from batarian biotics, they are not capable of fully countering truly skilled biotics. Pulse suppressors, phase disruptors, and anti-biotic grenades are fine against ninety-five per cent of biotic practitioners, but are limited in both quantity and utility on a highly mobile battlefield. Warp swords, biotic martial arts, and the more exotic energy manipulation abilities (Flares, Reave, Channel, et cetera) are also far harder to counter compared to typical biotic abilities.

Indeed, the worst defeat the SIU has ever suffered (aside from fleet losses) was actually at the hands of the Nightwind approximately one hundred and eighty years ago. The details have faded into myth and legend for the most part, but we know for a fact that the incident occurred after the SIU inadvertently kidnapped a fourth-born daughter of a minor House of the Thirty, who was on pilgrimage to an outlying asari shrine-world. Obviously, the SIU didn't know who she was – they're ruthless killers, not idiots – and so the young lady was treated in the same manner as other asari captives. She escaped after ten days – we don't know how – and flagged down a scout vessel from the Asari Republic. Within fourteen days, every SIU operative on Omega and in the Terminus was found either burned alive, flayed alive, or rendered asunder by biotics (also alive), with their eyes plucked out and ground into a paste to paint the ancient asari glyph for vengeance on their bodies. Within nineteen days, virulent haemorrhage plagues had broken out on nine outlying batarian worlds. Exactly twenty-one days after the incident, the SIU secondary headquarters on Gor'Shel III was hit by an _entire goddamned Ocean_ of Nightwind led by the (frankly terrifying) Midnight's Kiss and her Sisters.

Five. _Hundred_. Nightwind.

We don't know what happened there, though the audio-visual recordings from the Nightwind operatives are apparently stored securely within the Temple of Athame. Two teenage nephews and one adult cousin of the Batarian Emperor (at the time) were present. Midnight's Kiss drained their minds, plucked out their eyes, and castrated them; for a woman to do so compounded an already grave insult and ultimately contributed to the fall of that Emperor. There were no survivors. The facility and its surrounding grounds had a maximum life-support capacity of fourteen thousand people.

Systems Alliance forces have also defeated SIU units on multiple occasions, though these were pre-Hegemonic Collapse SIU operators and they certainly inflicted significant casualties on human forces before they were localised and contained. Combined arms operations and armour support in particular were effective at breaking them, and sniper deployment is absolutely necessary. According to Pel, it is critical to "disrupt those motherfucking squint's ops tempos" and "shit all over their tactical manuals by not playing the game they want you to play," whilst Leng advises that "much like our own N-Teams, SIU operators are not designed to operate in a traditional line of battle or be deployed for long in theater. They are elite strike units and special operatives, not infantry, and in knowing this, you can deny them their strengths and cut them apart." _(Addendum: he followed this up with a creepy nostalgic whisper-laugh, because of course he did – Tiffany)_

* * *

 **Final Thoughts**

Part of me hates that I had to do this, to see and experience things that I'm not ever going to forget, and part of me hates that you knew this is what would happen when you gave me this assignment.

But the rest of me hates the batarian even more for bringing this sickness and atrocity into existence in the first place. I understand your intent with this assignment and ultimately, I respect it, sir. I know you wouldn't choose to hurt me like that without good reason. I know you have humanity's best interests at heart. We can never forget who the enemy is or why they'll always be our enemy. It doesn't matter if it's the SIU or the Nightwind or the Broker. They are all irredeemable and must be purged from this galaxy. They offer nothing of value to humanity or even to aliens as a whole. Whilst I don't claim to have any great love for the common alien, none of them deserve to suffer at the hands of the SIU or the myriad other players in this shadow war.

What I still cannot understand is just _why_ the SIU – and batarians as a species – are compelled to act in such a gratuitously cruel manner. Likewise with the other forces we've studied. So many of these organisations, alien and human, could still accomplish most of their conventional objectives without deliberately trafficking in pain and misery. I suspect that there _is_ some reason for this, one that offers a degree of internal consistency to the Unit's otherwise schizophrenic modus operandi, but I cannot provide any hypothesis at this stage. What I do know is that these activities simply cannot be random.

There is no moral debate to be had here. Every single member of the Special Intervention Unit deserves to die. Their leadership deserves to die in ways that I can't even describe. The Batarian Emperor deserves eternity in whatever hell exists, and the entire Imperial Blood should follow him. There is no rationalising or accommodating the sickness that pervades the upper echelons of the Batarian Empire. We cannot avoid them like the Unseen Cloud or deal with them like Noveria. Any violence we inflict upon them will result in a thousand-fold reduction in the suffering of others at their hands. They represent a direct threat to Cerberus operations, to humanity, and even innocent aliens.

Kill them all. This is why Cerberus exists.

Dr. Tiffany Minsta


	9. Salarian League of Zero

**The Cerberus Files: Tactical Addenda, Opposing Forces**

 **Message Header: HELNET BEGIN ENCRYPTION STRING**

 **NEGOTIATING ARBITRAGE HEADERS...CLEAR**

 **SYSFILL 1129584-SUB-FIVE:** **Cross check complete**

 **ARISTOTLE-SIX-ONE-NINE :: PETROVSKY-619**

 **CREATING HANDSHAKE...ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED**

 **BEGIN TRANSMISSION: PETROVSKY**

* * *

Jack,

I've been busy reviewing the entirety of your planned third-string options. Vigil's capabilities are quite impressive if he can build out something of this nature in a short amount of time. That being said, if your gut instincts are right about how Shepard is going to react, we may need such emergency fallback options.

Then again, she just pasted Okeer. Jesus Christ. Can we at least make the attempt _not to piss her off?_ Because I don't like our odds if we do, regardless of whatever tripe comes out of Mr. Dunn's mouth.

I've also read the two reports Minsta's daughter put together. She shows a distressing lack of the ability to discern why we do not _bother_ going into the gory details, as these don't really help us a whit in planning what to do and also do nothing for keeping your lunch down.

At least she didn't include video, like Brooks did with her hanar write up.

I'll admit the NDC file was well done, and the Unseen Cloud was clearly a stellar effort - but the SIU was not the sort of thing a young girl should be having oversight into collating the research on, Jack. What in the hell were you thinking? She did a good job in identifying what they do but it's obvious she still hasn't got any more spine in her than her limpid father does.

Thank God she didn't put two and two together and start asking pointed questions about why no one has obliterated the batarians. Having the realization that the salarians and asari have probably left them to their devices to be a check and a drain on humans, elcor and volus would not go down well with her sheltered upbringing.

Ah, well. Civilians.

I've been pulling together what data we have on the salarian operational forces. The STG really doesn't count at this point, at least not when it comes to truly 'black ops' – that would be the League of Zero, the semi-mythical AIs that supposedly watch over the Salarian Union.

They make most of the other opposing force groups look like children playing.

While the League is not as openly... _disgusting_ as the batarians, they are incredibly hard to detect, much less stop, distressingly more dangerous and chillingly competent. For all of their macho bullshit, the SIU is simply not scaled enough to do any real damage on a galactic level, much like the Deathwatch. The League, on the other hand, is very dangerous, and more than that, possibly uncontrolled.

It doesn't really help that I've spent the past day or two racking my brains and I can't even figure out how to kill one of their operatives and make it actually stick. We don't even have the first clue where they are, and even _Vigil_ can't find them.

As always, I'm looking at them from a military – or at least, tactical – standpoint. I won't touch on the moral, ethical and other issues raised by their existence, much less what the hell they do to people. I could, but to what point?

It's not like we were much better.

* * *

 **ORIGINS OF THE LEAGUE**

I'm afraid this is going to be a touch lengthy, Jack. It's important to understand how the League even came about, both to understand why they're so dangerous and to grasp how compromised the SIX are.

Learning about the League has made some of the more extreme reactions of the SIX understandably pragmatic instead of merely sociopathic.

Salarians are good at being cagey about their history, but we have the advantage in the background of the League being extremely well known history. Even that, I must however point out, should be caveated – what we take as 'history' is assuming that salarians haven't left out parts of the story

Given that they had some kind of bad experiences with AI long before the League of Zero came around, I'm surprised it was ever formed. Then again, it is pretty clear the formation was certainly not at the behest of the SIX.

At any rate, the history as we know it is, for salarians, bracingly straightforward.

When the salarians and asari first met on the Citadel, when humans were still stabbing each other with pieces of metal, both races were (understandably) wary. Prior to this point, there was no STG – the various intelligence agencies of the three salarian nations had been combined into a single, large scaled organization known as the Ever Alert.

Supposedly, the Ever Alert were the main, driving reason for peace on Sur'kesh – their intelligence and sabotage skills were so feared that they could shut down entire armies. The Ever Alert did not answer directly to anyone, not even the SIX – but they were also fiercely apolitical and utterly neutral. The Ever Alert dominated salarian political and economic discourse until the discovery of the Citadel.

The Ever Alert's high command was often consulted by the dalatrasses of the SIX, and the meeting with the asari was no different. Many threat analysis projections were probably conducted by both sides, even as asari and salarians probed each others intentions and capabilities.

When it became blatantly apparent that not only were the asari far more powerful than the Salarian Union in terms of ship numbers and technology but also (to salarian eyes) nearly immortal and possessed of biotics, the leadership of the Ever Alert saw them as a threat. Despite strong arguments made to the SIX, however, the Ever Alert was not permitted to deploy to act as it saw fit, nor even to prepare for eventual asari betrayal.

While the Ever Alert did not answer to the SIX, and had extensive resources of their own, they didn't have the level of power or assets to wage total war across the gulf of space. The SIX refused to allow the Ever Alert to take command of the salarian military and even suggested that further resistance would have the Three Nations rethink their stance on the Ever Alert's independence.

At the time, the SIX was under the misconception that the asari could read minds, due some translation issues, and felt any proactive movements might touch off a completely unneeded – and possibly fatal – war. The Ever Alert felt instead that waiting was weakness, and when they were ordered to stand down – and threatened with being outlawed – the most extreme members took independent action of their own.

The very best of the group were reformed into another group, the League of One. Devoted to ensuring the survival of the salarian species, this new body drew on both the skills of the Ever Alert as well as a host of private consulted operatives, without consulting the SIX.

While asari and salarian anthropologists studied one another's culture and savants worked out translation tables, the League of One focused on penetration of the asari computer networks. While asari are decent computer programmers, they were no match for the League, which even at this early date was using arrays of powerful VI's and sophisticated hacking tools.

Curiously, the story splits here. The 'public' version was that when the asari and salarians agreed to work together, the League rebelled against the SIX. The SIX attempted to deploy the Ever Alert to stop them, but the League, being the best of the Ever Alert, killed most of the group in pitched covert strikes.

The STG was formed from existing private organizations, retired Ever Alert, and other elements to stop them from unleashing some kind of genocidal virus on the asari and killing them all.

I'm not a virologist, Jack, but even I can see a big problem with this. The League were all described as tech-savants, computer programmers, ghost-hackers, and other mostly military and technical types. **None** of them were biochemists, and back then the salarians did not even express much interested in bio-chem.

Also implausible would be the time frame and opportunity - while the asari and salarians no doubt found ways to conduct certain biological analysis, working up a plague of that nature would take years and hundreds of test subjects.

More than that, the salarians were still recovering as a species from the Collapse Plague and its deleterious effects. Salarians did not first experiment with serious genetically recombinated plagues for a thousand years.

So how could a bunch of hackers somehow come up with a virus to genocide a race they had been in contact with for less than _two months?_

They didn't.

The 'true' story was hard to find, and we mostly got lucky by stumbling across references in a facility that Kai and Pel struck belonging to P. That crazed nut, it seems, has been doing his own digging into events. Not surprising, given that he likes to troll the Council races... but worrying in that we are now one.

Anyway, the League of One, this version goes, had hacked into asari net-spaces and discovered the Council of Thirty drawing up plans to genocide the salarians using conventional attacks if the salarians became problematic. This did not distress them. Indeed, the fact that the asari saw salarians as a threat was rather reassuring to the twisted salarian mind.

What did alarm them, however, was the fact that – somehow – the salarian data-net had been penetrated to such a degree that the asari already knew almost everything about salarian defenses, the location of Sur'kesh, and had even begun breaking past the security of the Reach Research Compound.

How the asari did this, given the salarians were better hackers? Hell if I know, Jack – but it makes sense the salarians kept it quiet. And it worries me – if the asari had these capabilities back then, how much good is the Silver Legion in its protection of humanity?

Whatever the tools used, the results were unacceptable to the League of One.

When the SIX declined again a request from the Ever Alert to conduct preemptive strikes, the League of One engaged in building computer hacks and viral attacks on the networks of the SIX that seemed to come from asari sources.

When the asari denied these attacks, calling for a meeting to hash out issues and discover who was behind this, the League penetrated the asari comm network and transmitted faked distress calls from asari vessels claiming to be under attack by salarians. They tied the fakes to an asari ship currently being escorted by salarian ships to perform science analysis on nearby stellar clusters, then hacked and locked out the comm systems of the asari ship.

Asari warships came in weapons hot from FTL and demanded the salarians surrender, literally seconds after the League of One's virus attacks on the asari ship destabilized its warp core, destroying it. The salarians protested their innocence and the asari opened fire.

After a very short fight, however, the asari broke off combat, standing down and transmitting that they had just been commanded to stop by the Council of Matriarchs. Somehow, the asari had figured out the distress call was fake, and a close investigation of the wrecked asari vessel discovered it had been sabotaged.

The Ever Alert were summoned by a furious SIX, demanding answers. When several high ranking members of the Ever Alert failed to show up, one of the asari suggested this was possibly some kind of internal plot.

The story gets vague at this point, Jack, but we know that four weeks later, the STG had been formed, the Ever Alert disbanded, and the Union was battling the League of One. It took them a full year to kill the group off, working with the asari where needed, and the last one of the League died trying to trigger some kind of bomb aboard the main asari command ship at the Citadel.

The willingness of the salarian dalatrasses to kill their own kind without hesitation to preserve the alliance won the asari over, leading to the formation of the Citadel Council. Most of the Ever Alert who were not vetted and allowed into the STG were executed, and many of the private intellect services used by salarian corporations were heavily restricted at this time.

Nothing else is heard about the League for almost three centuries, except vague rumors that they all didn't die. We still have no idea who (or what) built the AI frameworks, or where the League obtained its vast resource base from.

However, given the near psychotic paranoia of the Ever Alert, and the fact that to prevent issues with compromised agents the Ever Alert had assets distinct from the Union, that these resources – and possibly, the AI frameworks themselves – were already around when the League of One formed.

The first hint of the League of Zero was during the so-called Little Rebellions, when the STG Master of the time rebelled against the SIX and attempted, with the Wheel Priests, to remove them from control of the Salarian Union.

We aren't entirely clearly on the outcome. What we do know is that something hacked the defense systems of Sur'kesh – _all_ of them – and forced the parties to talk instead of engaging in open warfare.

The League of Zero has only rarely acted since then, at least in direct clashes. Instead they make very heavy use of nanoaugmented throwaway agents, VI daemons, and digital penetration. Yet their influence is extremely heavy.

They were instrumental in shattering krogan defense networks during the Rebellions, shut down the ability of the Starfive turian separatists to engage their FLT drives when they were fleeing from turian space, and smoothly countered every single volus attempt to penetrate or subvert the Salarian Union's financial markets.

Ultimately, however, the danger comes from their agents. Each one is a nightmare of black nano and technologies we can't match – they've been using ghost-hacked operators with onboard nanofab tech and medical systems since before such things were even invented by asari or salarian tech labs.

* * *

 **THE EXISTENCE OF THE LEAGUE**

Based on what little we know, the League of Zero are nineteen redbox AI reproductions of the original League of One, linked to some kind of Prothean nanofabrication facility and possibly a Prothean VI. They've demonstrated that they aren't even remotely like living beings anymore, and the few clashes the Silver Legion had with them resulted in entire teams going mad and burning out in seconds. Whatever AI technology they are using is far superior to anything we have or even know of – despite being online for centuries, none of the League have gone rampant.

The physical location of the League is equally unknown. The Ever Alert used several super-long range scoutships equipped with prototype technology to make one-way trips deep into the red-band of FTL ranges, where a ship could not possibly have enough charge endurance or fuel to return. It is believed the League used some sort of Prothean vessel to reach a star system beyond conventional FTL – certainly we have fragmentary evidence they have one functional Prothean warship, which was capable of outdistancing even long range STG scouts.

The League does not answer to the SIX, the STG, or the Wheel Priests, but takes 'requests' from all of them. The League is curiously in support of the SIX and sees the STG as (at best) irritating amateurs.

* * *

 **THE GOAL OF THE LEAGUE**

Defining the goals of a bunch of immortal AI beings is difficult at best, but they seem to be mostly concerned with the preservation of the Salarian people. They differ strongly from the STG and the SIX in that the latter two only care about preservation of the SIX, their power structure, and the Salarian Union, while the League clearly doesn't care about the politics.

Given their interference with other races, however, they are also clearly not accepting other alien life forms as anything but lethal threats. A large part of their doctrine appears to be long-term preparation for the extermination of **all** non-salarian intelligent or sapient life, as this is the most logical step of ensuring salarian safety. Their primary focus appears to be destroying the Thirty and the Hanar, and everything else is secondary.

Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the League of Zero is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of AI technology, redboxes, and ever more invasive combinations of nanotech and cybernetics into the framework of something like Von Neumann architecture. Our most conservative estimates state the League could possibly have the capacity to create self-replicating war machines and possibly even infective nano-aug sequestration agents that would allow them to dominate anything and _everything_ within the next thirty to fifty years.

It is this, along with the data on the Alteration Framework, that drove the High Lords of Sol to invest in NOVENSILES, which includes counter-agents to this sort of thing. That doesn't make it right, Jack - but it gives us some idea of the stakes that drove them there.

* * *

 **LEAGUE MEMBERSHIP**

The League of Zero is only the nineteen AI systems. Despite having thousands of agents and operators, it is important to remember that _all of these are linked to an AI._ There is no method to hide actions from them – if we take out a combat team, they know immediately. If a spy penetrates security and we kill him before he can escape, they still have the data..

There are still gradations of units, however. The most basic are civilians – both salarian and alien – unwittingly hosting an nano-augmentation system. This system is very lightweight, powered by conversion of long-term fat resources, and consists of some kind of nervous monitor array that records everything a being sees or hears. The second component is a tiny burst transmitter that uses nano-laced iron in the skeleton as an antenna, and transmits regularly.

Jack, we have no idea how many millions of people are infected with this – you were there when we finally figured out they had it and damn near a fifth of Cerberus itself was infected. The nanotech is not hard to remove and isn't EMP hardened – but it seems easily spread and even medical scans won't pick it up if they don't know exactly what to look for.

This is the least physically dangerous part of the network, but the most dangerous in terms of what it can find.

Some infected in sensitive or important positions are further augmented, with some kind of bonded serotonin and dopamine emitter in the brain (for humans, other aliens have similar devices in them). This is a long-term, very subtle but effective method of conditioning targets, and it tends to make them spend lots of time reading documents, reviewing technical information, and basically exposing themselves to lots of classified data.

Combat agents appear to be custom built flash clones of various races (not just salarians) with extremely heavy levels of cybernetic and nanonic upgrades. A lot of this cyber has been identified by Vigil as definitely Prothean, with bits he can't identify but suspects may belong to a cybernetic race known as the Zha'til that the Protheans destroyed. He cautions the Zha'til were an entire species of organics that combined with AI and went rampant and their technology was certainly superior to that of the Protheans.

Elites are always salarians, each one a genetically superior copy of the original League of Zero's body, fitted with the finest and most dangerous combat cyberware. It was assumed for a while that these beings WERE the League, but we know now they exist on hardware and these things are just remote platforms. Even so, they are very dangerous.

As far as I can tell, the League isn't open for others to join. Vigil reported that the League attempted to hack him and he slapped them back, after which they very respectfully inquired if he was open to working with them to remove 'illogical and primitive fodder/races' from the galaxy. Vigil's reply was negative, and the conversation seems to imply that they don't offer membership to anything that isn't an AI.

I'd keep a close eye on EVA – and the AI the Alliance has, EDI – if I were you, Jack.

* * *

 **LEAGUE COMBAT DOCTRINE**

Jack, we've both seen some extreme examples of combat atrocity. Hell, I've committed some. But at the end of the day, most such things are either to send a message or because you're in a hurry.

The League literally sees non-salarians as dangerous infectious diseases, and acts in kind. Their combat doctrine? Overkill. Extermination. Speed.

League assault teams are blindingly fast, with impossible reaction times and unnatural marksman skills, but they use weapons with high collateral damage aspects and do not bother worrying about innocent lives – including salarian ones. Worse still, their physical attacks are always combined with devastating info-war attacks and in some cases, feats of combat engineering that terrify.

Clouds of hundreds of thousands of omni-drones, hacking service mechs and even industrial equipment to attack bystanders, destabilizing fusion reactors, playing havoc with water, sewage or other survival systems – all of these are gambits they use.

This makes defense against them very difficult, as many worlds rely on VI management of everything from GTS defenses to producing meals. One LoZ op hacked turian food processor units making military rations to taint them with levo sugars, killing well over five hundred turians before the source was discovered. When engineers went in to the facility to fix the problem, the system combined various chemicals and biological products to produce an explosion that killed over sixteen hundred people and sickened more as levo sugars and proteins leached into groundwater tables.

The League engages in levels of cold-blooded murder and needless violence seemingly based on whim, with some operations being almost bloodless and others becoming massacres. It doesn't help that they often use hacking and other tricks to place blame on such attacks on other parties, which is made especially true when they use flash clones of turians, humans or asari as the attacking agents.

* * *

 **LEAGUE EQUIPMENT**

Most League operatives under the AI's control seem to depend on a library of common weapons that match the race of the flash clone, either obtained locally or using replicative nano from their own bodies. Given that the majority of them have full and distressing levels of black nanonics, the fact that they use 3D printing systems to generate weapons, armor, explosives and whatever else they need should not be unexpected.

There appears to be no physical links between the League agents and wherever the League itself is – we suspect they've developed a QEC network like our own to remotely control forward production facilities, probably in the Traverse or the fringes of the Black Rim. As long as they're careful, it is very unlikely we could trace this back.

Rarely, as I mentioned earlier, there have been sightings of a possible Prothean warship. Vigil states the grainy images of such a vessel match the Prothean version of a combat-capable troop invasion ship, and that the League might have a full armor of proton, particle and heavy anti-particle beams to play with along with Prothean bionetic armor. We haven't seen any clear evidence of such.

Then again, the most savage League of Zero attacks seem to focus on the asari and hanar and end in massive explosions, so such weapons may be used without us knowing.

* * *

 **LEAGUE TACTICS**

A warning, Jack – a lot of this is sadly unverifiable, using my gut and what bits of data we have correlated. Ezno did an operation trying to counter a League assault on an SA AI research facility and was completely overmatched, but his observations are useful.

I believe that the League operates its forward units in cells that each stem from a central control base that produces clones, equipment, and ships. These bases send out 'base' agents with 3D printing nano and set them up in the regions they wish to target. The base agent then creates more clones, with all attacks only being able to be traced back, at best, to the base agent.

The League of Zero has noted op-tempo differences in small-scale and large-scale operations – specifically, they tend to run dozens of even smaller ops, but will cease all other ops when its time to launch a big one. Vigil believes they have limited bandwidth to control forces in the large scale, and the most useful data from this is when we see small scale ops drop off, we know a big one is coming.

Most League agents are plainclothes flashclones until the time of the op itself – there is almost no real way to pick up who is an agent. Only rarely do they deploy in a more conventional manner – armored drop pods that split up to not only reveal the dropped agents, but the pod itself splits into small, heavily armed combat drones.

League forces do not bother with retreat, as killing them is only killing a terminal point. They cannot be broken, do not have 'morale', and are completely immune to being shaken by superior forces. Their aiming and combat skills are all at the very highest tier of capabilities, with even the most mousy looking clone capable of killing multiple elites in a dreadfully short amount of time.

League Elites are often equipped with some kind of nano-regenerative suite of black nano, meaning heavy weapons, flame units, or plasma is required to put them down for good.

We haven't seen any operations (yet) involving space combat, although twice they've boarded ships – using vorcha flash clones with cybernetic modifications that allowed survival in vacuum and some kind of specialized cancer that prevented the vorcha from regenerating and rejecting the cyberware. This capability is extremely distressing as there's literally no warning before vorcha monstrosities are tearing through a space vessel.

* * *

 **LEAGUE OPERATIONS**

The League, as I said, sometimes accepts suggestions from salarian authorities, but for the most part is completely independent. That shapes their operations into three rough categories.

First, INDIRECT ACTION ops are subtle attacks on the economic, military and industrial capabilities of all non-salarian races, using non-military means such as hacking, as well as the gathering of large amounts of restricted data for future planning. These can mimic anything from fake Unseen Cloud financial hacks to framing up opposing intel agencies for break-ins to direct criminal hacking. Some elements of this appear to be in the furtherance of obtaining funds, resources and raw materials.

DIRECT ACTION are military-style assaults on targets of opportunity. Shipyards, power plants, transport nexi, tourist attractions – the more casualties and the more infrastructure damage accomplished, the better the op. The asari are fully aware of the League being behind most of these, but given that the SIX have made distinct efforts at stopping the League and failed, do not hold it against the Union itself.

Most direct action assaults are actually used to plant additional observer agents into a planet in the chaos. They tend to mask these by attributing them to other forces – terrorists, separatists, slavers, and the like – but occasionally will not even bother with that, such as the destruction of the drydocks at Menae in turian space.

I remain baffled as to the ultimate goal of these senseless, brutal attacks, but I can stack the dots – each attack has ramifications that make rebuilding in that area expensive and difficult.

ZERO TOLERANCE deployments are when the League plans a killing strike against a target. The League engaged in this regularly during the Krogan Rebellions and again during the Unification Wars, each time to destabilize the targets prior to committing mass atrocity. The last such attack was against the volus in 2181, the destruction of the orbital trade station around their moon, killing a staggering six and half million volus civilians and costing nearly a trillion credits of economic, environmental and financial damage as well as making many aliens withdraw from the nearby Vol Prime Trade station.

Another fairly recent attack a year ago was against the Yhur-hu Pirate group operating in the Silver Rim and preying on salarian trade vessels. The attacks stopped suddenly, and STG investigators found the entire Yhur-hu fleet dead in space with atmospheres fouled with poison, and savage massacres of every Yhur-hu outpost and base. Their main operation on Hanal was destroyed when two large bulk haulers were FTL-plotted into the capital at top speed, killing four million people and rendering the world a nearly sterile wreck. The blame was planted on the Altor pirates, their key rivals, and resulted in the STG taking that group apart.

No one noticed except us that most of the abandoned Altor pirate equipment and resources vanished as the STG finished the group off.

* * *

 **FINAL THOUGHTS**

On the surface, I suppose, the League is not as bad as the sickening excess of the rapist Nightwind, or the more grotesque and outrageous violations committed by the SIU.

Yet in terms of danger, they are the _most_ dangerous group out there. You could have a League of Zero plant in your ranks right now – maybe one of the flunkies who brings you dinner – and wouldn't know it. They can be literally anyone, anywhere, and the amount of data they must have access to is staggering and frightening to think about.

It's clear to me that the League is positioning the Salarian Union to be 'safe' before they proceed with their genocidal master plan. After all, the Salarians cannot fight off an enraged galaxy. They've done so with alacrity and managed to make most intelligence organs blame many of the atrocities they've committed onto others, who respond to outrageous claims by actually doing something horrible.

The League has been curiously quiescent in recent days, however – actually, their activities have slowly been tailing off since the Battle of the Citadel, and it is likely they are preparing for the Reapers just as we are. That worries me, I think, because it implies they think the threat is very eminent.

The League's AI's are completely illegal, and on paper the Salarian Union has disowned them. I suspect the League has incriminating blackmail evidence on the SIX (and perhaps other figures) and uses this to avoid retaliation, but their ability to keep things hidden and place blame on others has not worked on Vigil.

That being said, Jack, no one else has a Vigil to reveal the real culprits behind these attacks, and I worry the League's genocidal tendencies may actually try to allow the Reapers to critically weaken non-salarian races before they would act to oppose them. On the other hand, the very illegalities they consist of, not to mention the fact that their outlaw status makes them fair game, means they have to spend a great deal of effort fending off attacks.

I'm sure I could go into greater detail – but the point, I think, is made. In chess, one cannot ignore the field of play to focus on individual pieces. The strategies needed to win are less about what the pieces do and more about how to combine them to thwart the enemy.

Likewise, the mere existence of the League is probably why the asari haven't been more aggressive in getting the upper hand in their long-range clash with the SIX, and certainly explains why the Council races have taken such a hard line against most AI research.

If we can get Vigil to localize these robotic, undying monsters, we should obliterate them from the galaxy.


End file.
